charcoal,
the sticks being rubbed with red ochre only, but the stones either with
red ochre or charcoal.[128] Further, it is customary on these occasions
to press the sacred objects against the stomachs and thighs of all the
men present; this is supposed to untie their bowels, which are thought
to be tightened and knotted by the emotion which the men feel at the
sight of these venerated sticks and stones. Indeed, the emotion is
sometimes very real: men have been seen to weep on beholding these
mystic objects for the first time after a considerable interval.[129]
Whenever the sacred store-house is visited and its contents examined,
the old men explain to the younger men the marks incised on the sticks
and stones, and recite the traditions associated with the dead men to
whom they belonged;[130] so that these rude objects of wood and stone,
with the lines and dots scratched on them, serve the savages as
memorials of the past; they are in fact rudimentary archives as well as,
we may almost say, rudimentary idols; for a stone or stick which
represents a revered ancestor and is supposed to be endowed with some
portion of his spirit, is not far from being an idol. No wonder,
therefore, that they are guarded and treasured by a tribe as its most
precious possession. When a group of natives have been robbed of them by
thoughtless white men and have found the sacred store-house empty, they
have tried to kill the traitor who betrayed the hallowed spot to the
strangers, and have remained in camp for a fortnight weeping and wailing
for the loss and plastering themselves with pipeclay, which is their
token of mourning for the dead.[131] Yet, as a great mark of friendship,
they will sometimes lend these sacred sticks and stones to a
neighbouring group; for believing that the sticks and stones are
associated with the spiritual parts of their former and present owners,
they naturally wish to have as many of them as possible and regard their
possession as a treasure of great price, a sort of reservoir of
spiritual force,[132] which can be turned to account not only in battle
by worsting the enemy, but in various other ways, such as by magically
increasing the food supply. For instance, when a man of the grass-seed
totem wishes to increase the supply of grass-seed in order that it may
be eaten by people of other totems, he goes to the sacred store-house,
clears the ground all around it, takes out a few of the holy sticks and
stones, smears