when a trap is laid, is connected with the idea of tigers being animated by the souls of departed men.[1] In other districts of the world, one of the most important cases connected with these is the worship paid by the North American Indian to his medicine-animal, of which he kills one specimen to preserve its skin, which thenceforth receives adoration and grants protection as a fetish.[2] In South Africa, as has been already mentioned, the Zulus hold that divine ancestral shades are embodied in certain tame and harmless snakes, whom their human kinsfolk receive with kindly respect and propitiate with food.[3] In West Africa, monkeys near a grave-yard are supposed to be animated by the spirits of the dead, and the general theory of sacred and worshipped crocodiles, snakes, birds, bats, elephants, hyænas, leopards, &c., is divided between the two great departments of the fetish-theory, in some cases the creature being the actual embodiment or personation of the spirit, and in other cases sacred to it or under its protection.[4] Hardly any region of the world displays so perfectly as this the worship of serpents as fetish-animals endowed with high spiritual qualities, to kill one of whom would be an offence unpardonable. For a single description of negro ophiolatry, may be cited Bosman's description from Whydah in the Bight of Benin; here the highest order of deities were a kind of snakes which swarm in the villages, reigned over by that huge chief monster, uppermost and greatest and as it were the grandfather of all, who dwelt in his snake-house beneath a lofty tree, and there received the royal offerings of meat and drink, cattle and money and stuffs. So heartfelt was the veneration of the snakes, that the Dutchmen made it a
- ↑ Marsden, 'Sumatra,' p. 292.
- ↑ Loskiel, 'Ind. of N. A.' part i. p. 40; Catlin, 'N. A. Ind.' vol. i. p. 36; Schoolcraft, 'Tribes," part i. p. 34, part v. p. 652; Waitz, vol. iii. p. 190.
- ↑ See ante, p. 8; Callaway, 'Rel. of Amazulu,' p. 196.
- ↑ Steinhauser, 'Religion des Negers,' l.c. p. 133. J. L. Wilson, 'W. Afr.' pp. 210, 218. Schlegel, 'Ewe-Sprache,' p. xv.
