Animation of beasts, plants, and birds

It is difficult to separate the guardian spirits of individuals from those of the tribe; for both are treated alike, and are often essentially the same. The totem system comes in here. "One Samoan saw his god in the eel, another in the shark, another in the turtle, another in the dog, another in the owl, another in the lizard, and so on through every class of sea-fishes, birds, quadrupeds, and every kind of living thing, including even several mollusks. A man would eat freely of what was regarded as the incarnation of the god of another man, but the incarnation of his own god he would consider it death to injure or to eat; for the god was supposed to avenge the guilt by taking up his abode in that person's body, and causing to generate there the very thing which he had eaten, until it produced death."¹

Magic dolls made of human bone, votive bunches of hair, and tortoise skull, from a temple in the Admiralty Islands
largest approx 540mm high. (Christy Collection.)

Beside the function of acting as the outward shell of guardian spirits, special duties were allotted, in the history of the gods and of their dealing with men, to animated objects.

We hear much of the tree of life, by whose topmost branches the gods left heaven when descending to earth. In Tonga, the Toa-tree grew up to heaven for that purpose. The talking tree is found near the habitation of Ikuleo, the lord of heaven; and if he demands the death of a man, a canoe is sent to fetch him. This tree takes the souls; and when men grew as shoots from the world-tree, they received their souls from the height of heaven. Legend reduced the heavenly growth to a tree from which a man looked into heaven, as in Pelew; or, as in the Banks Islands, made it grow till the divine being, Quat, climbed up it to escape his pursuers. Souls of gods, too, are confined in trees. Thus Maui learned from his uncle Inaporari, how to recognise in the lower world, by knocking on them, the noro-trees in which the lives of his brethren and himself were imprisoned. Among the Maoris trees represent the god Tane, whose children are the birds of land and sea. In Tahiti, the ao-tree is planted near temples, since the god lives in it. From the jagged splinters of the aito-tree, Tangaroa, the self-begotten, created the inferior gods before he produced men. In Melanesia, the Fijians venerate trees by throwing leaves' on the spot here the last evening shadow lies. Besides the vesi-tree, the wood of which is good for canoes, the fig-tree with its spreading roots, and any coco-palm which forks, are regarded as seats for the gods, and so sacred. The good little soul-deities of the Veli sing from hollow trees. Weapons are rubbed with certain leaves to ensure success; but in Vate, leaves are buried near a house in order to cast a shade over it and cause illness. In the New Hebrides the pandanus receives special reverence. At sacred dances the neophytes appear shrouded in bunches of pandanus, and crowned with garlands of the same. In Micronesia, too, sacred trees are reverenced; for example, in Bygor, coco-palms standing in enclosures, because the Ani descend on to their tops. In Pelew, the Kalit who created the names of the chiefs, and dwelt originally within the earth, is embodied in great forest trees. A bush that grows before the king's house in Korror passes for the last scion of a plant brought from a submerged spirit land; and at Tapituea in the Gilberts, New Year's sacrifices are offered under an old Mamani-tree.

Birds appear in the Mani-legend as bearers and guardians of fire; and also in a legend of the creation of man. Men were formed by the snipe or the lark, who was sent to earth by its father Tangaroa, during the process of scratching up worms. A Samoan legend makes the souls of men in bird shape be brought down by the same birds. The seeds of useful plants are brought to earth by a bird from the gardens of the moon. The New Zealander regarded the cockatoo as sacred; while it was a bad omen if the tarata-bird flew over a column of warriors on the march. The owl caused absolute terror. Various other birds were also sacred in Polynesia as the bringers of fire and souls; and in Tahiti the heron and the otatare-bird. Red feathers symbolised the fire which the Creator places in all living beings. One who knows Fiji, says: "If you would sketch an appropriate emblem of the old Fijian religion, you must select a fine pandanus, beneath which is sleeping coiled up a mighty snake, while hard by a cock with fine feathers is crowing to wake the sleeper." This bird, the harbinger of day, the herald of sunlight, the bird of the sun-god, is the same for destroying which the sons of Ndengeh aroused the wrath of the fathers of the gods to such a pitch that he sent a great deluge on the earth. Great white shells adorned his legs, and so numerous were his beautiful feathers, that by plucking one wing only you could cover the whole mountain-top as with a cloud. In the rest of Melanesia, next to the waran lizard, the buceros, hornbill or rhinoceros bird, is the most frequent subject of sculpture. In the Hamburg Museum is a carving, in which he is taking a child from its mother's body with his ripping beak.

[1 Turner's Samoa.]