Chapter 6

CIRCUMCISION AMONG SAVAGE TRIBES.

E. Casalis,[16] who, in the capacity of missionary, for a very long time resided among the Bassoutos, tells us that among that nation the operation is performed at the age of from thirteen to fifteen years. The ceremony is gone through once in three or four years. So important an event is it considered by the Bassoutos that they date events from one of these observances, as the Romans dated events from a certain consulship, or the Greeks from an Olympiade. At the time fixed, all the candidates go through a sham rebellion and escape to the woods; the warriors arm and give chase, and, after a sham battle, capture the insurgents, whom they bring back as prisoners, amidst dancing and great rejoicings, which are the preludes to the feast. The next day the huts of mystery (_mapato_) are erected, where, after the circumcision, the young men are to reside for some eight months, under the tutorship of experienced teachers, who drill them in the use of the spear, sword, and shield, teaching them to endure hunger, thirst, blows, and all manner of hardships; prolonged fasts and cruel flagellations being regarded as pastimes between the exercises. The severity of the regulations may be judged from the fact that the instructors have a right to put to death any one who may try to escape from these ordeals. The women are rigorously excluded from these camps, but the men are allowed to visit them, when they have the privilege of assisting the teachers by adding additional blows and precepts to the backs of the unlucky candidates. After eight months of such training, the young men are oiled from head to foot and dressed in a garment, and are now given the name which they are to bear for the rest of their lives. The _mapato_, or mystery hut, is now burned to the ground and the young men return to the village. The maternal uncle of the youth here presents him with a javelin for his defense, and a cow that is to furnish him with nourishment. Until the time of his marriage, the newly circumcised dwell together; their duties being of a menial character, such as gathering wood and attending to the flocks and droves.

M. Paul Lafargue looks upon circumcision among the negro races as being a rite commemorating their advent to manhood; Livingstone, who has also observed the above, related incidents in relation to the performance of _boguera_, or circumcision, among the Bassoutos, believes that with them the rite has a purely civil significance, being in no way connected with religion.

Among many of the African tribes the young maids have an ordeal approaching to circumcision that they must pass when near the age of thirteen, this rite bearing precisely the same relation regarding their entrance into the state of womanhood that male circumcision denotes the entrance into manhood on the part of the males among the Bassoutos. At the appointed time the maids are gathered together and conducted to the riverbank; they are placed under the care of expert matrons. They here reside, after having undergone a kind of baptism; they are maltreated, punished, and abused by the old women, with a view of making them hardy and insensible to pain; they are also schooled in the science and art of African household duties. Among the Gallinas of Sierra Leone, in addition to the other observances, the clitoris of the young maid is excised at midnight, while the moon is at its full, after which they receive their name by which they are to be known through life. The initiation of each sex into these mysteries is exclusively for the sex engaged, and it would be as fatal for a man to steal into the camp of the women during the performance of these ceremonies as it would be fatal for a woman to enter a _mapato_ where the young men are undergoing their ordeal. After their initiation into womanhood, the maids live by themselves, similarly to the young men, until they marry.

Lafargue relates that among the Australians circumcision is held in such importance that tribes at war will suspend all hostilities and meet in peace during the observance or performance of the rite. Here, again, we have a repetition, with a slight variation, of the practices of the Bassoutos,--something which gives some countenance to the hero-warrior idea of the origin of circumcision advanced by Bergmann. The Australian warriors go through a mimic battle, and, after a series of combats, finally capture the boys aged about from thirteen to fourteen years, whom they bear away amidst the cries and lamentations of the mothers and other female relatives, who, in their excess of grief, mutilate themselves by cutting gashes into their thighs, so that they bleed profusely. The boys are, in the meantime, carried to some out-of-the-way place, where an old man, perched on a tree or some rising ground, through the means of a musical instrument made of a deal-board and human hair, announced that the rite is in process of performance, so that neither women nor children might approach. Tufts of moss are placed in the axilla and on the pubis, to represent puberty, and among some tribes the skin of the penis is divided to the scrotum with a stone knife, while others content themselves with simply making a circular incision, which removes the prepuce, after the Jewish manner, the excised portion being placed as a ring on the median finger of the left hand. The circumcised then takes himself to the hills or woods, and there remains until healed, carefully guarding himself against the approach of any female. After this the third part of the ceremonies takes place: the godfather of the youth opens a vein in his own arm, the circumcised youth is placed on all-fours, and an incision is made from the neck down as far as the lumbar region, and the blood of the godfather is made to flow and mingle with that of the godchild; this being in reality a bloody baptism, and a near relation to the blood-compacts of the Arabs.

The Malays, as well as the men of Borneo, are circumcised. The Battos likewise perform the rite. Among the Islanders they sometimes ligate the prepuce so that it drops off. Among the Battos the same object is reached by small bamboo sticks, between which the prepuce is fastened. In New Caledonia and Tidshi the boys are circumcised in their seventh year. The Tonga Islanders split the prepuce on the dorsum with a piece of bamboo or of shell. In the Marquesas and Sandwich Islands the operation is superintended by the priests.[17]