Tweet
Shamanic Use of Fossils
Since Brachiopod fossils seem to turn up here from time to time I thought you might be interested in this information I found tucked away in S.P. Langley’s annual report to the Director of the Smithsonian in 1899 (Langley was Secretary to the Smithsonian Bureau of American Ethnology). I quote him verbatim, but with dots… where sections have been skipped… and with advance apologies for Langley’s continual use of the term “savages”!
Remedial medicine has a long and interesting history… In every early society there is used a word which has the significance of “priest” as well as “doctor.” The word “shaman” has come to be used as the representative of such words… for in the earlier stages of culture, when the opinions of mankind were mostly superstitions, religion essayed to control all human activities, and the priest was the dictator in every field of life…
How this state of affairs originated we can not here set forth in any adequate manner, but we are compelled to refer to it in treating of the subject of medicine, and to make a brief characterization of the nature of early remedies. Here we must set forth the doctrine of what I shall call imputation. Imputation is the practice of erroneous attribution, as of effects to wrong causes; for example, when I impute the pain which I feel in my head to a spell which has been wrought upon me by a witch. A superstition is an opinion which a man may hold by reason of imputation…
Savage men always impute mind, or organized consciousness, to inanimate things, such as plants, rocks, the phenomena of water, and phenomena of the atmosphere. They also impute mind to the heavenly bodies, which they suppose to be bodies in the tent of the sky, which to them is the great wigwam of this world. If the savage strikes his foot against a rock and seriously wounds himself, he does not attribute the accident to his own carelessness, but he imputes it to the rock itself, as being designed by the rock in order to injure him. Thus motives are assigned to all inanimate things, and events are believed by him to be brought about by others (animate or inanimate) which in fact are due to his own activity. This is the fundamental phase of imputation.
Then tribal men believe that mind, which is a property of animal bodies, is a property of all bodies, and that this property is not a concomitant of the body and inherent in the body itself, but that mind is independent of body and can have apart from it, and when the mind leaves one body another mind may take up its residence there. This is the doctrine of ghosts as free, independent, and wandering minds.
There are many phenomena which to the savage mind lead to this opinion. I may briefly mention them: The phenomena of dreams, where men seem to go out of their own bodies and wander about the earth; the phenomena of ecstasy, produced by excessive mental or physical activity, where men seem to have visions of other times and places or to hear voices which do not speak in their ears; the phenomena of hypnotism, where men seem to see scenes which are not naturally presented to the hypnotized person; the phenomena of intoxication, where men believe they observe that which bystanders know to be not true; the phenomena of insanity, where the diseased person has thoughts which are erroneous, in which case the savage believes that the ghost of another has taken possession of the invalid…
The savage man imputes the diseases which afflict mankind not to the bodies with which he peoples the world, but to the ghosts of these bodies. Hence we often find in a savage tribe that diseases are classified in a more or less vague way as the diseases of the stars, the diseases of the waters, the diseases of the rocks, the diseases of plants, and the diseases of animals. He does not consciously classify them in this manner, but he imputes them to the ghosts of these objects. When a patient is examined by the medicine-man, he may affirm that he has the elk disease, the bear disease, the wolf disease, the rattlesnake disease, or the green-snake disease, or he may say that he has the spider disease, or the fly disease. Especially are animals chosen as the authors of ailments.
I once witnessed the treatment of a child by an Indian shaman who claimed that its ailment was due to a little fossil abundantly found in the carboniferous rocks of Colorado, and known as Athyris subtilita. I have many times known colds to be attributed to insects, toothache to be attributed to worms, rheumatism to be attributed to snakes, fevers to be attributed to birds; but on careful examination I have often found that the bodies of these things were not held to be the authors of the mischief, but that their ghosts were the active agencies. Not always can this explanation be obtained, and sometimes the thing itself will be exhibited as having been extracted from the patient; but, in the case of the Athyris, the medicine-man asserted to me that, when he extracted the disease from the child, he put the fossil in his mouth before he performed the act of suction by which the ghost was extracted, and that his office consisted in extracting the ghost from the child and returning it again to the body of the fossil.
[Here’s a drawing of the fossil mentioned]
It may be worth while for me to state how widely prevalent is this doctrine of disease among the North American Indians. I have found it myself among many of the Shoshonean tribes, which occupy a large area in the western portion of the United States; I have found it among the Wintun of California and many other tribes of the Pacific slope; I have found it also among the tribes of the Gulf states, and have never failed to find instances in any tribe in which I have made diligent inquiry. Such causes for disease, however abundant they may be, must not be considered to be universal as they appear to the savage mind. The tribes of America seem rather to prefer to ascribe their evils to their enemies within the tribe, or still more often to their enemies in other tribes, for of course they believe in witchcraft. Especially are epidemics imputed to hostile tribes. The theory of the action of their enemies seems to be somewhat of this nature: That the shamans of the enemies have control over disease ghosts.
Remedial medicine has a long and interesting history… In every early society there is used a word which has the significance of “priest” as well as “doctor.” The word “shaman” has come to be used as the representative of such words… for in the earlier stages of culture, when the opinions of mankind were mostly superstitions, religion essayed to control all human activities, and the priest was the dictator in every field of life…
How this state of affairs originated we can not here set forth in any adequate manner, but we are compelled to refer to it in treating of the subject of medicine, and to make a brief characterization of the nature of early remedies. Here we must set forth the doctrine of what I shall call imputation. Imputation is the practice of erroneous attribution, as of effects to wrong causes; for example, when I impute the pain which I feel in my head to a spell which has been wrought upon me by a witch. A superstition is an opinion which a man may hold by reason of imputation…
Savage men always impute mind, or organized consciousness, to inanimate things, such as plants, rocks, the phenomena of water, and phenomena of the atmosphere. They also impute mind to the heavenly bodies, which they suppose to be bodies in the tent of the sky, which to them is the great wigwam of this world. If the savage strikes his foot against a rock and seriously wounds himself, he does not attribute the accident to his own carelessness, but he imputes it to the rock itself, as being designed by the rock in order to injure him. Thus motives are assigned to all inanimate things, and events are believed by him to be brought about by others (animate or inanimate) which in fact are due to his own activity. This is the fundamental phase of imputation.
Then tribal men believe that mind, which is a property of animal bodies, is a property of all bodies, and that this property is not a concomitant of the body and inherent in the body itself, but that mind is independent of body and can have apart from it, and when the mind leaves one body another mind may take up its residence there. This is the doctrine of ghosts as free, independent, and wandering minds.
There are many phenomena which to the savage mind lead to this opinion. I may briefly mention them: The phenomena of dreams, where men seem to go out of their own bodies and wander about the earth; the phenomena of ecstasy, produced by excessive mental or physical activity, where men seem to have visions of other times and places or to hear voices which do not speak in their ears; the phenomena of hypnotism, where men seem to see scenes which are not naturally presented to the hypnotized person; the phenomena of intoxication, where men believe they observe that which bystanders know to be not true; the phenomena of insanity, where the diseased person has thoughts which are erroneous, in which case the savage believes that the ghost of another has taken possession of the invalid…
The savage man imputes the diseases which afflict mankind not to the bodies with which he peoples the world, but to the ghosts of these bodies. Hence we often find in a savage tribe that diseases are classified in a more or less vague way as the diseases of the stars, the diseases of the waters, the diseases of the rocks, the diseases of plants, and the diseases of animals. He does not consciously classify them in this manner, but he imputes them to the ghosts of these objects. When a patient is examined by the medicine-man, he may affirm that he has the elk disease, the bear disease, the wolf disease, the rattlesnake disease, or the green-snake disease, or he may say that he has the spider disease, or the fly disease. Especially are animals chosen as the authors of ailments.
I once witnessed the treatment of a child by an Indian shaman who claimed that its ailment was due to a little fossil abundantly found in the carboniferous rocks of Colorado, and known as Athyris subtilita. I have many times known colds to be attributed to insects, toothache to be attributed to worms, rheumatism to be attributed to snakes, fevers to be attributed to birds; but on careful examination I have often found that the bodies of these things were not held to be the authors of the mischief, but that their ghosts were the active agencies. Not always can this explanation be obtained, and sometimes the thing itself will be exhibited as having been extracted from the patient; but, in the case of the Athyris, the medicine-man asserted to me that, when he extracted the disease from the child, he put the fossil in his mouth before he performed the act of suction by which the ghost was extracted, and that his office consisted in extracting the ghost from the child and returning it again to the body of the fossil.
[Here’s a drawing of the fossil mentioned]
It may be worth while for me to state how widely prevalent is this doctrine of disease among the North American Indians. I have found it myself among many of the Shoshonean tribes, which occupy a large area in the western portion of the United States; I have found it among the Wintun of California and many other tribes of the Pacific slope; I have found it also among the tribes of the Gulf states, and have never failed to find instances in any tribe in which I have made diligent inquiry. Such causes for disease, however abundant they may be, must not be considered to be universal as they appear to the savage mind. The tribes of America seem rather to prefer to ascribe their evils to their enemies within the tribe, or still more often to their enemies in other tribes, for of course they believe in witchcraft. Especially are epidemics imputed to hostile tribes. The theory of the action of their enemies seems to be somewhat of this nature: That the shamans of the enemies have control over disease ghosts.
Comment