While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
An ordeal is strictly a
form of trial to determine guilt or innocence, but the term
has cone to be applied in a secondary sense to any severe
trial or test of courage, endurance, and fortitude. In
accordance with these two usages of the term, ordeals among
the North American tribes may be divided into
(1) those used to establish guilt and to settle differences,
and
(2) those undergone for the sake of some material or
supernatural advantage.
The ordeals corresponding closest to the tests to which the name was
originally applied were those undertaken to determine witches or
wizards. If it was believed that a man had died in consequence of
being bewitched, the Tsimshian would take his heart out and put a
red-hot stone against it, wishing at the same time that the enemy
might die. If the heart burst, they thought that their wish would be
fulfilled; if not, their suspicions were believed to be unfounded. A
Haida shaman repeated the names of all persons in the village in the
presence of a live mouse and determined the guilty party by watching
its motions. A Tlingit suspected of witchcraft was tied up for 8 or 10
days to extort a confession from him, and he was liberated at the end
of that period if he were still alive. But as confession secured
immediate liberty and involved no unpleasant consequences except an
obligation to remove the spell, few were probably found innocent.
This, however, can hardly be considered as a real ordeal, since the
guilt of the victim was practically assumed, and the test was in the
nature of a torment to extract confession.
Intimately connected with ordeals of this class were contests between
individuals and bodies of individuals, for it was supposed that
victory was determined more by supernatural than by natural power. A
case is recorded among the Comanche where two men whose enmity had
become so great as to defy all attempts at reconciliation were allowed
to fight a duel. Their left arms having been tied together, a knife
was placed in the right hand of each, and they fought until both fell.
A similar duel is recorded in one of the Teton myths, and it is
probable that the custom was almost universal. Resembling these were
the contests in vogue among Eskimo tribes.
When two bodies of Eskimo met who were strangers to each other, each
party selected a champion, and the two struck each other on the side
of the head or the bared shoulders until one gave in. Anciently Netchilirmiut and Aivilirmiut champions contested by pressing the
points of their knives against each other's cheeks. Such contests were
also forced on persons wandering among strange people and are said to
have been matters of life
and death. Chinook myths speak of
similar tests of endurance between super
natural beings, and perhaps they were
shared by men. Differences between towns on the north Pacific coast were often
settled by appointing a day for fighting,
when the people of both sides arrayed
themselves in their hide and wooden
armor and engaged in a pitched battle,
the issue being determined by the fall of
one or two prominent men. Contests
between strangers or representatives of
different towns or social groups were also settled by playing a game.
At a feast on the north Pacific coast one who had used careless or
slighting words toward the people of his host was forced to devour a
tray full of bad-tasting food, or perhaps to swallow a quantity of
urine. Two persons often contested to see which could empty a tray the
more expeditiously.
Ordeals of the second class would cover the hardships placed upon a
growing boy to make him strong, the fasts and regulations to which a
girl was subjected at puberty, and those which a youth underwent in
order to obtain supernatural helpers (see Child life), as well as the
solitary fasts of persons who desired to become shamans, or of shamans
who desired greater supernatural power. Finally, it is especially
applicable to the fasts and tortures undergone in preparation for
ceremonies or by way of initiation into a secret society.
The first of these may best be considered
under Education and
Puberty customs, but, although some of the ceremonies for the purpose
of initiating a youth into the mysteries of the tribe took place about
the time of puberty, their connection there with is not always evident,
and they may well be treated here. Thus Pueblo children, when old
enough to have the religious mysteries imparted to them, went through
a ceremonial flogging, and it is related of the Alibamu and other
Indian tribes of the Gulf states that at a certain time they caused
their children to pass in array and whipped them till they drew blood.
The huskanaw,(q. v.), or huskany, was an
ordeal among Virginia Indians undertaken for the purpose of preparing
youths for the higher duties of manhood. It consisted in solitary
confinement and the use of emetics, "whereby remembrance of the past
was supposed to be obliterated and the mind left free for the
reception of new impressions." Among those tribes in which individuals
acquired supernatural helpers a youth was compelled to go out alone
into the forest or upon the mountains for a long period, fast there,
and sometimes take certain medicines to enable him to see his guardian
spirit. Similar were the ordeals gone through by chiefs among the
Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian, and other north Pacific coast tribes when
they desired to increase their wealth, or success in war, or to obtain
long life, as also by shamans who wished increased powers. At such
times they chewed certain herbs supposed to aid them in seeing the
spirits. The use of the "black drink" (q. v.) by
Muskhogean tribes was
with similar intent, as also were the emetics just referred to in use
among the Virginian peoples.
While undergoing initiation into a secret society on the north Pacific
coast a youth fasted and for a certain period disappeared into the
woods, where he was supposed to commune with the spirit of the society
in complete solitude. Any one discovering a
Kwakiutl youth at this
time could slay him and obtain the secret society privileges in
his stead. On the plains the principal participants in the Sun dance
(q. v.) had skewers run through the fleshy parts of their backs, to
which thongs were attached, fastened at the other end to the Sun-dance
pole. Sometimes a person was drawn up so high as barely to touch the
ground and afterward would throw his weight against the skewers until
they tore their way out. Another participant would have the thongs fastened to a skull, which
he pulled around the entire camping
circle, and no matter what obstacles impeded his progress he was not
allowed to touch either thongs or skull with his hands. During the
ceremony of Dakhpike, or Nakhpike, among the
Hidatsa, devotees ran
arrows through their muscles in different parts of their bodies; and
on one occasion a warrior is known to have tied a thirsty horse to his
body by means of thongs passed through holes in his flesh, after which
he led him to water, restrained him from drinking without touching his
hands to the thongs, and brought him back in triumph. The special
ordeal of a Cheyenne society was to walk with hare feet on hot coals.
A person initiated into the
Chippewa and
Menominee society of the Midewiwin
was "shot" with a medicine bag and immediately fell on his face. By
making him fall on his face a secret society spirit or the guardian
spirit of a northwest coast shaman also made itself felt. When
introduced into the Omaha society, called Washashka, one was shot in
the Adam's apple by something said to be taken from the head of an
otter. As part of the ceremony of initiation among the Hopi a man had
to take a feathered prayer-stick to a distant spring, running all the
way, and return within a certain time; and chosen men of the Zuñi were
obliged to walk to a lake 45 m. distant, clothed only in the
breech-cloth and so exposed to the rays of-the burning sun, in order
to deposit plume-sticks and pray for rain. Among the same people one
of the ordeals to which an initiate into the Priesthood of the Bow was
subjected was to sit naked for hours on a large ant-hill, his flesh
exposed to the torment of myriads of ants. At the time of the winter
solstice the Hopi priests sat naked in a circle and suffered gourds of
ice-cold water to he dashed over them.
Ordeals of this kind enter so intimately
into ceremonies of initiation that it is
often difficult to distinguish them.
Certain regulations were also gone through
before war expeditions, hunting excursions, or the preparation of
medicines. Medicines were generally compounded by individuals after
fasts, abstinence from women, and isolation in the woods or mountains.
Before going to hunt the leader of a party fasted for a certain length
of time and counted off so many days until one arrived which he
considered his lucky clay. On the northwest coast the warriors bathed
in the sea in winter time, after which they whipped each other with
branches, and until the first encounter took place they fasted and
abstained from water as much as possible. Elsewhere warriors were in
the habit of resorting to the sweat-lodge. Among the tribes of the
east and some others prisoners were
forced to run between two lines of people armed with clubs, tomahawks,
and other weapons, and he who reached the chief's house or a certain
mark in safety was preserved. In as much as the object behind most
tortures was to break down the victim's self-command and extort from
him some indication of weakness, while the aim of the victim was to
show an unmoved countenance, flinging back scorn and defiance at his
tormentors until the very last, burning at the stake and its
accompanying horrors partook somewhat of the nature of an ordeal.
