The History and Environmental Impacts of Hunting Deities: Supernatural Gamekeepers and Animal Masters (Conflict, Environment, and Social Complexity, 4) 3031375025, 9783031375026

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Conflict, Environment, and Social Complexity

Richard J. Chacon  Editor

The History and Environmental Impacts of Hunting Deities Supernatural Gamekeepers and Animal Masters

Conflict, Environment, and Social Complexity Volume 4

Series Editor Richard J. Chacon, Sociology & Anthropology Department, Winthrop University, Rock Hill, SC, USA

This series aims to expand our understanding of conflict, anthropogenic environmental impacts, and the rise of complex societies from a host of interdisciplinary approaches and theoretical perspectives. The series seeks publications on the origins and nature of prehistoric conflict, warfare, and ritual violence broadly understood as well as how conflict, warfare, and ritual violence manifest themselves in modern day contexts. This series also examines how prehistoric patterns of natural resource utilization impacted ancient environments as well as how ongoing use of natural resources affects present day environments. Additionally, it analyzes the internal and external factors that gave rise to social complexity from a variety of materialist and non-materialist theoretical perspectives. The broad scope of the series encompasses prehistoric, historical, and contemporary case studies from multiple geographical regions. Lastly, the series’ multidisciplinary approach welcomes archaeological, ethnographic, historical, sociological, political science, biological, conservationist, land use policy, and environmental perspectives that will produce new and valuable insights on salient topics. The benefits from these new insights will extend beyond the academic world to society as a whole.

Richard J. Chacon Editor

The History and Environmental Impacts of Hunting Deities Supernatural Gamekeepers and Animal Masters

Editor Richard J. Chacon Sociology, Criminology, and Anthropology Dept Winthrop University Rock Hill, SC, USA

ISSN 2730-5872 ISSN 2730-5880 (electronic) Conflict, Environment, and Social Complexity ISBN 978-3-031-37502-6 ISBN 978-3-031-37503-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37503-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Abstract This edited volume analyzes the belief in supernatural gamekeepers and/or animal masters of wildlife from a cross-cultural perspective. Many traditional societies hold that these supernatural entities grant hunting success to those who faithfully perform specific rituals and who adhere to various prescribed restrictions. Conversely, hunters who violate established harvesting restrictions may experience a loss of hunting luck, sickness, and in some cases, even death. This interdisciplinary work documents both the antiquity and the widespread geographical distribution of this belief along with surveying the various manifestations of this cosmology by way of various case studies from Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America. Some chapters explore the multifaceted manifestations of this belief as they appear in petroglyphs/pictographs and other forms of material culture in relation to their concomitant magico-ritual gamekeeper/animal master components. Other chapters focus on the environmental impacts of these beliefs/rituals and prescribed foraging restrictions by analyzing how they affect game harvests. Keywords Supernatural Gamekeepers, Animal Masters, Hunting, Biodiversity, Conservation, Environmental impacts, Petroglyphs, Pictographs, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)

Acknowledgements

Richard J. Chacon wishes to thank all of the contributors for their steadfast commitment to the volume. Chacon would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable critiques. Chacon is grateful to all the people at Winthrop University who were supportive of this project, most especially Dr. Brad Tripp (Chair of the Sociology, Criminology, and Anthropology Department). This research benefited greatly from the diligent efforts of the entire Inter-Library Loan (ILL) Staff of Winthrop University’s Dacus Library. Chacon also received indispensable computer support from Technology Services. He is most grateful to his friend and colleague David Dye for his valuable guidance. Lastly, Chacon would like to thank his lovely wife Yamilette Chacon for her longstanding support. Without her assistance and inspiration, this project would have never come to fruition.

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Contents

1

Introduction to Supernatural Gamekeepers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Richard J. Chacon

1

2

The Antlered Mother: From the Paleolithic to the Modern Era . . . . Nataliia Mykhailova

9

3

Spirit Forces and Liminal Beings in North Asian Rock Art . . . . . . . Esther Jacobson-Tepfer

27

4

Humanoid Pillars and the Leopard’s Paw: Thoughts on Animal Masters and Gamekeepers in the Ancient Near East . . . . . . Diana L. Stein

53

5

Baghan Deo: An Indian Tiger God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Meenakshi Dubey-Pathak

87

6

A Spirit-Ruled Landscape: Ecology, Cosmology, and Change Among Katuic Upland Groups in the Central Annamites of Laos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Nikolas Århem

7

Shamans, Spiritualists, Shapeshifters, Healers, and Diviners Among the Hunting and Gathering Societies of Africa . . . . . . . . . . 155 Robert K. Hitchcock

8

Holy Enforcers: St. Cuthbert and St. Hubert as Modern Icons of Conservation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Peggy L. Eppig

9

Iconic Resources, Prestige, and Conservation on Boigu Island of the Torres Strait, Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Shelly Tiley

ix

x

Contents

10

Shadow of the Whale: West Coast Rituals Associated with Luring Whales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 John R. Johnson

11

Supernatural Gamekeeper: Yahwe’era, Sacred Narrative, and Rock Art, Tehachapi Mountains, California . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 Alan P. Garfinkel

12

Supernatural Gamekeepers of Eastern North America: Animal Masters, Guardian Animals, and Masters of Animals . . . . . 241 David H. Dye

13

Supernatural Gamekeepers Among the Tsimane’ of Bolivian Amazonia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares, Tomás L. Huanca, and Victoria Reyes-García

14

Supernatural Gamekeepers/Animal Masters Among the Munduruku (Wuy Jugu), Tukano, Embera and Achuar (Shiwiar) of the Neotropics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301 Richard J. Chacon

15

Andean Guardian Mountains and the Ethical Obligations Underlying Resource Management: Between Reciprocity and Predation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331 Denise Y. Arnold

16

Supernatural Gamekeepers: Conclusions from an Archaeological Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355 Benjamin Smith

17

Of Game Keepers, Opportunism, and Conservation . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 Raymond Hames

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1

Fig. 2.2 Fig. 2.3 Fig. 2.4

Fig. 2.5

Fig. 2.6 Fig. 2.7 Fig. 2.8

Fig. 2.9

Fig. 2.10

Fig. 2.11

Evenki drawing from the twentieth century depicting a shaman’s journey to the dwelling place of Bugady Eninteen: 1—Bugady Eninteen with her husband; 2, 5—fence with deer—the ownership of Bugady Eninteen; 3—shaman with lasso; 4—deer, which represents ancestral spirits bugady (Anisimov 1958) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Saami view of the cosmos (Mulk and Bayliss-Smith 2007) . . . . . . Parturient antlered deity and reindeer. Northern Russian embroideries (after Rybakov 1981) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pregnant Deer Mother depicted on a deer antler. Laugerie Basse Cave, France. Upper Paleolithic (photo by Alexandr Yanevich) . .. . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . Pictograph featuring a female cervid (likely a moose) with her calf. Angara River, Siberia. Neolithic period (Okladnikov 1966) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Zooanthropomorphic figures with deer. Chalmn-Varre (Northern Russia) (Rybakov 1981) . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . Totemic subject. Parturient women depicted with fawns. Chuluut, Mongoliia (Gracheva 1990) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hittite silver rhyton in the form of a stag. [Vessel terminating in the forepart of a stag ca. fourteenth–thirteenth century B.C.] Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . This scene appears on the Hittite silver rhyton. It depicts a goddess engaging in ritual activity. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Depiction of Argimpasa from the Scythian Alexandropol Mound in the Ukraine (Polin and Alexeev 2018). In this instance, this Scythian goddess is featured as the Mistress of Animals . .. .. . .. . .. .. . .. . .. .. . .. . .. .. . .. . .. .. . .. . .. .. . .. . .. Caucasian depictions of Deer-Women from the Medieval Period. Dagestan (Markovin 2006) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

12 13 14

16

17 18 19

19

19

20 21 xi

xii

Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2

Fig. 3.3

Fig. 3.4

Fig. 3.5

Fig. 3.6

Fig. 3.7

Fig. 3.8 Fig. 3.9

Fig. 3.10

Fig. 4.1

Fig. 4.2

Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4 Fig. 4.5

List of Figures

Aurochs. Paleolithic. BO II. Photograph: Gary Tepfer . . . . . . . . . . . . Panel of petroglyphic images including cow moose and seals. Eneolithic or early Bronze Age. From Second Stone Island, Angara River, Irkutsk Oblast, Russia. Drawing: L.-M. Kara, after Okladnikov (1966) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Broken monolith, two views. Eneolithic. From Lake Bilyë, Shira Region, Khakassia, Russia. Red sandstone, 280 × 90 cm. Drawing: L.-M. Kara, after Kyzlasov (1986) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Broken monolith with bovid mask and female breasts. Eneolithic. From a site near Erbin, Ust’-Abakan Region, Khakassia, Russia. Grey granite, 130 × 55 × 27 cm. Drawing: L.-M. Kara, after Kyzlasov (1986) .. . .. .. . .. . .. . .. .. . .. . .. . .. . .. .. . .. . .. . .. .. . .. . .. . .. . .. Slab with large, masked image on one side, realistic images on the other. Early Bronze Age. From the cemetery of Razliv X, Bograd Region, Khakassia, Russia. Grey-green sandstone, 182 × 85 cm. Drawing: L.-M. Kara, after Pshenitsyna and Piatkin (2006) . . . . . . Images executed in painted and pecking techniques. Bronze Age. Slab from burial 5, Karakol, Altai Republic, Russia. Bronze Age. Drawing: L.-M. Kara, after Kubarev (1988) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bird-woman with raised arms and feathered body. Early Bronze Age. Kalbak-Tash, Altai Republic, Russia. Drawing: L.-M. Kara, after Kubarev and Jacobson (1996) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Birthing spirit figure approached by animals. Bronze Age. TS V, Baga Oigor complex. Photograph: Gary Tepfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Boulder with scenes of hunting, a family caravan, and a stag antler that becomes a mountain trail. Late Bronze Age. BO I, Baga Oigor complex. Photograph: Gary Tepfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anecdotal plaque, one of a pair, with female figure, male riders and their horses, and tree. Late Bronze or Early Iron Age. Gold, length approximately 16.2 cm. Siberian Treasure of Peter the Great, Hermitage State Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. Drawing: L.-M. Kara . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . Contest scene with bull-man, lion, human-headed bull, 6-curled hero, and bull. Cylinder seal and modern impression. Ur, Iraq. 2400–2200 BCE (BM 121566d ©Trustees of the British Museum). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Contest scene with 6-curled hero and lion. Seal of the scribe Shakullum, servant of Puzu-Shullat, priest of Dūrum. c. 2250 BCE (BM 89147 ©Trustees of the British Museum). . . . . . . . . . . . . . Master of Animals and deer. Stamp seal, Tepe Gawra, Level XIII. Ubaid, 4500–3800 BCE (Amiet 1980: no. 40). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Master of Animals and lions. Stamp seal amulet, Susa I. Ubaid, 4500–3800 BCE (Amiet 1980: no. 119A). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Map of Neolithic sites (Courtesy of Nigel Goring-Morris and Anna Belfer-Cohen). . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. .

28

30

31

32

33

35

36 38

41

49

54

55 56 57 61

List of Figures

Fig. 4.6 Fig. 4.7 Fig. 4.8

Fig. 4.9

Fig. 4.10

Fig. 4.11

Fig. 4.12 Fig. 4.13

Fig. 4.14

Fig. 4.15 Fig. 4.16

Fig. 4.17 Fig. 4.18 Fig. 4.19 Fig. 4.20

Fig. 4.21 Fig. 4.22

A reconstruction of Göbekli Tepe (art Fernando G. Baptista, ©2021 National Geographic Partners, LLC). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pillar 18 (Enclosure D), Göbekli Tepe. (© Robert Schoch and Catherine Ulissey). . . .. . . . . .. . . . . . .. . . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . . .. . . . . . .. . . . . .. . . Front of Pillar 33, Göbekli Tepe, Enclosure D, 10th–9th mill. BCE. snakes and spider (Photo Irmgard Wagner, GT02_P33_Diw0004, ©Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Göbekli Tepe Projekt). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Side of Pillar 2, Göbekli Tepe, Enclosure A, 10th–9th mill. BCE. aurochs above fox and crane (Schmidt 2006, Abb. 46) (Photo Christoph Gerber, GT97_P02_9701a, ©Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Göbekli Tepe Projekt). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Front of Pillar 11, Göbekli Tepe, Lions Pillar Building, 10th–9th mill. BCE. lions, (Photo Dieter Johannes, GT98_P11_Ddj0005, ©Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Göbekli Tepe Projekt). . . . . Reconstruction of Çatalhöyük and the surrounding landscape during the spring flood, (drawn by John Swogger, Hodder 2006: pl. 3). . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . .. . . . Bucrania and horn cores set in a bench. Çatalhöyük, Shrine VI.61. PPNB, 8th–7th mill. BCE (Mellaart 1975: fig. 58a). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hunting scene with great bull, Mural painting, Çatalhöyük, Shrine F V.1, PPNB, 8th–7th mill. BCE (Drawn by Raymonde Enderlé Ludovivi, Mellaart 1966:Pl. LIVb). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Elderly woman seated on leopard chair. Clay figurine, Çatalhöyük, Shrine All.1, PPNB, 7th mill. BCE (Hodder 2006: pl. 24). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Human with mace(?) riding bull. Rock engraving, Hemma Plateau. 3rd mill. BCE (Van Berg et al. 2004: fig. d). . . . . . . . . . . . . . Human with mace combating lion, Rock engraving, Hemma Plateau. 3rd mill. BCE (LeMaître and Van Berg 2008: fig. 6, ©Mission archéologique de Khishâm). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Human with mace riding a canid (?) with a dog. Rock engraving, Hemma Plateau. 3rd mill. BCE (Van Berg et al. 2004: fig. f). . . . . Lion attacking bull with plant. Cylinder seal, unprov. Early 3rd mill. BCE (Amiet 1980: no. 412). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lion, bull protome, bull and plant. Cylinder seal, unprov. Late 4th–early 3rd mill. BCE (Amiet 1980: no. 516). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lions attacking bulls, goat head and hindquarters. Cylinder seal, Tell Agrab, Temple of Shara. 3rd mill. BCE (Amiet 1980: no. 756). . . . .. . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . . .. . . .. . Lions attacking bulls, goat, vessel, animal limbs. Cylinder seal, Ur SIS 4–5. Early 3rd mill. BCE (Amiet 1980: no. 779). . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lions attacking human-headed bulls, nude hero holding inverted lion. Cylinder seal, Fara. Mid 3rd mill. BCE (Amiet 1980: no. 1006). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

xiii

62 63

64

65

66

68 69

70

71 75

75 76 76 77

77 77

78

xiv

Fig. 4.23

Fig. 4.24

Fig. 4.25 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2

Fig. 5.3 Fig. 5.4 Fig. 5.5

Fig. 5.6 Fig. 5.7 Fig. 5.8 Fig. 5.9 Fig. 5.10 Fig. 5.11

Fig. 5.12

Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2

List of Figures

Nude hero between lions attacking human-headed bulls, miniature lion attacking gazelle, inscription. Cylinder seal, unprov. 3rd mill. BCE (Amiet 1980: no. 1078). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dancing figures in costume. Rock engraving, Dhuweila, Late PPNB, 7th millennium BCE (image reproduced by permission of Alison Betts). . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . Bird (?)-headed man driving Persian gazelle into kite. Petroglyph, Hemma Plateau. 3rd mill. BCE (Van Berg et al. 2004: fig. b). . . . Belkhandar Bori. A man is depicted seemingly about to mount a tiger that is following two buffaloes . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . Belkhandar Bori. A man is depicted riding a tiger. Tales of individuals being capable of controlling are popular among the various forest tribes of Central India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Umariya. A Bagheshwer Pat (Tiger God shrine) located in a remote section of a forest that is near a Baiga village . . . . . . . . . . . . . Belkandhar Bori. A man-eating tiger is shown with a human head surrounded by two circles while an archer appears below . . . . . . . . Kanji Ghat. The first tiger, towards the right, is shown in the act of eating a human being while the second tiger, towards the left, is shown having consumed most of the victim’s body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dindhori. Baigas in the act of worshipping the Baghesur Baba (Tiger God) at a shrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dhabuaghat 4. Several tigers are depicted while a woman, perhaps lying on the ground, appears below. Enhanced with DStretch . . . . Belkandhar Bori. An isolated tiger appears in white and off-white paint with large whiskers and claws . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Belkhandar 2. Two decorated tigers are shown following each other while two crabs appear near them . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sadari. A dancing man wearing tiger attire with a long tail is depicted in this rock art panel . . . .. . . . . .. . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . .. . . . . .. . (a) Satna. A lion shrine located outside a village. (b) Bandhavgarh. A life-size statue of a Tiger God which is located next to the owner’s house near a road .. .. . .. . .. .. . .. . .. .. . .. .. . .. . .. Gond men dancing while wearing tiger masks and attire during the last day of the Navratri Festival held during the month of October .. .. . .. .. . .. .. . .. .. . .. .. . .. .. . .. .. . .. .. . .. .. . .. .. . .. .. . .. .. . .. .. . Timber truck passing through Lamam District (Sekong Province) . . .. . .. . . .. . .. . . .. . . .. . .. . . .. . . .. . .. . . .. . . .. . .. . . .. . .. . . .. . . .. . Mapping the landscape together with Loy villagers. This map includes pre-printed streams with some roads marked. The preprinted streams ensure that the features added by the villagers match up with official maps of the area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

78

79 79 89

90 92 95

95 101 102 103 104 104

106

108 115

123

List of Figures

Fig. 6.3

Fig. 6.4 Fig. 6.5 Fig. 6.6 Fig. 6.7

Fig. 6.8

Fig. 6.9

Fig. 6.10

Fig. 6.11

Fig. 6.12

Fig. 6.13

Fig. 6.14 Fig. 6.15 Fig. 6.16

A participatory map of Loy drawn on a pre-printed baseline map (indicating streams). The map shows the three main spirit areas (marked 1–3) plus the estimated location of the Korraam spirit area (4). Green indicates “never farmed” areas, Yellow “at some point used for farming,” Pink “forests destroyed by the War” and crosses (x) “areas inhabited by spirits.” The beans on this map shows the areas used by the elephants in the dry season; note that elephants dwell almost exclusively within the spirit areas . . . . . . . . A plant claimed to be important to elephants (Pa’ehh Hill) . . . . . . . A metallic object within the Pa’ehh area .. . . . .. . . . .. . . . .. . . . .. . . . .. . Another relic from the Viet Nam War lying in the middle of the Pa’ehh spirit forest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A large man-made pole (between Loy settlement and Terrååm Hill) claimed by our local guides to be part of a 200-year-old rice barn . . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . The area called “the gate to Terrååm.” From this point onwards, the forest was covered with large old-growth trees. However, along the area’s edges, much of the old-growth trees had been cut down by the road- and school-construction teams (The destroyed area is marked by the number “2” on Fig. 6.10 [orange]) . . . . . . . . . A very large bamboo stand within the Terrååm spirit area. The outskirts of the Terrååm area could be used by the villagers for harvesting building materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Close-up of the Terrååm spirit area on the map. Note the two roads (red lines) that pass close to the edge of the Terrååm area. The placement of these roads made it possible for the road construction teams to extract valuable old-growth trees from the spirit area (based on the principle of “salvage logging”) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . View from the top of the Terrååm waterfall. This was one of the two “spirit ponds” in the Terrååm area. According to the villagers, gibbons liked to play near the pond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The remnants of an old bombshell. Villagers claim that bombs and forest fires destroyed large areas that were previously old-growth forest. Sometimes, local groups attempted to farm these war-ravaged areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Another metallic object. Bombshells, bomb craters, parts of broken vehicles, and other scrap metals were scattered throughout the Kaleum village landscape. The craters were often surrounded by bamboo stands and severely degraded forests, confirming the many local accounts of the destruction brought about by the war . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Freehand map of the Tang Plang village landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A dried up “spirit pond” next to the Tang Plang village school . . The only salt lick in the Tang Plang area was also located only a few meters away from the settlement perimeter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

xv

124 129 130 131

133

134

135

136

137

141

142 144 145 146

xvi

Fig. 6.17

Fig. 6.18

Fig. 7.1 Fig. 10.1 Fig. 10.2 Fig. 10.3

Fig. 10.4 Fig. 10.5

Fig. 10.6

Fig. 11.1

Fig. 12.1 Fig. 12.2 Fig. 12.3

Fig. 12.4

Fig. 12.5

List of Figures

The strangler-fig spirit in the forest of Tang Plang. This area was located only about 200 m from the settlement and 100 m from the village school . . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . Villagers pointing at the sacred hill named Tåång. Tåång appeared to be the tutelary spirit of Tang Plang village, taking an active protective role and allegedly helping the villagers as long as they do not clear any swiddens in its territory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Map showing the locations of selected African hunting and gathering societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Indigenous societies mentioned in the text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cape Alava Whale Petroglyphs, Makah Territory (photograph courtesy of Rick Bury, used with permission) . .. . . .. . . .. . .. . . .. . .. . (a) Miniature whale effigy from Santa Catalina Island, bluish-gray schist, 8.6 cm (Abbott 1879:Fig. 101). (b) Whale effigy from Las Llagas, Santa Barbara County, shale, 12.3 cm (courtesy of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History). (c) Cetacean effigies from San Nicolas Island collected by Léon de Cessac, Musée du quai Branly, Paris (John R. Johnson photograph) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cave of the Whales pictographs, CA-SNI-144, San Nicolas Island (drawn by Kathleen Conti, used with permission) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Giant whale pictograph, 6 m, at Cueva de los Toños, Baja California (panorama image using DStretch YRE enhancement, courtesy of Jon Harman, used with permission) .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. .. . Puerto Marqués petroglyphs of a swordfish and breaching humpback whale (Interpretive panel, Palma Sola Zona Arqueológica, Instituto Nacional Antropología e Historia) . . . . . . . Yahwera Kahnina (The Animal Master’s Home) pictograph. Postprocessed digital photograph of the panel employing the DStretch utility (Harman 2020). Photograph by the late Tom Hnatiw. Central figure is the Animal Master. Two snakes are identified. The one on the right is mostly covered with an alkaline stain from water flowing over the limestone rock canvas. The largest figure is 3 feet (0.9 meters) tall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Beaver bowl from the Colvin Lake Site, Ballard County, Kentucky (15BA31), Photograph by David H. Dye . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Otter “tea pot” from the Kent (aka Lipsky) site (3LE8). Photograph by David H. Dye . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (a) Judaculla Rock, Jackson County, North Carolina. Richard Chacon appears behind the large boulder. Photograph courtesy of Yamilette Chacon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hero Twins Adorno Rim Bowl, Lawrence County, Arkansas. Courtesy of the Saint Louis Science Center, Catalog # 8x43. Photograph by David H. Dye . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Earth Mother Bottle from the Bradley site (3CT7), Crittenden County, Arkansas. Photograph by David H. Dye . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

147

148 157 202 206

213 214

216

217

233 251 254

256

257 257

List of Figures

Fig. 12.6

Fig. 13.1

Fig. 13.2

Fig. 13.3

Fig. 14.1 Fig. 14.2

Bear’s Belly, Arikara. Photograph by Edward Curtis, 1908. North American Great Plains. Photogravure. From Edward Curtis, The North American Indian: The Complete Portfolios, vol. 5, pl. 150. National Cowboy & Western History Museum. 1979.10.162.25.03. Gift of John Wayne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Pa’tsene salt springs, located in the upper part of the Maniqui River, was one of the most important sacred sites on the Tsimane’ landscape. The original photograph was taken by Albert Hahn in 1952 (reproduced with permission from the Frobenius-Institut, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Pa’tsene salt springs was marked by the presence of sacred petroplyphs. According to the Tsimane’ creation myth, this location was where Dojity’s wife gave birth to humanity. The original photograph was taken by Albert Hahn in 1952 (reproduced with permission from the Frobenius-Institut, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anthropomorphic figures depicted in the sacred petroglyphs of Pa’tsene salt springs. The original photograph was taken by Albert Hahn in 1952 (reproduced with permission from the FrobeniusInstitut, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Achuar subsistence hunter named Kaísar (photo by R. Chacon) . Egalitarian blowgun hunters from the Achuar village of Alto Corrientes (photo by R. Chacon) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

xvii

261

290

291

292 311 318

List of Tables

Table 7.1 Table 10.1

African Hunter-gatherers and their environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Cultural importance of whales for indigenous societies of North America’s Pacific Coast . . . . . .. . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .. . . 218

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Chapter 1

Introduction to Supernatural Gamekeepers Richard J. Chacon

Abstract The contributors to this edited volume analyze beliefs in supernatural gamekeepers/animal masters of wildlife from a cross-cultural perspective. Many societies hold the belief that these supernaturals grant hunting success to those who faithfully perform specific rituals and who adhere to various restrictions prescribed by the supernatural gamekeepers. Conversely, hunters who violate established harvesting restrictions may experience a loss of hunting luck, sickness, and, in some cases, even death. This interdisciplinary work documents both the antiquity and the widespread geographical distribution of this belief along with surveying the various manifestations of this cosmology by way of case studies from Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America. Some chapters explore the multifaceted manifestations of this belief as they appear in petroglyphs/pictographs and other forms of material culture in relation to their magico-ritual gamekeeper/animal master components. Other chapters examine the environmental impacts of these beliefs/ rituals along with documenting the effects of the concomitant foraging restrictions that should be considered as forms of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). Keywords Supernatural Gamekeepers · Animal Masters · Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) · Wildlife · Biodiversity · Conservation · Cosmology · Mythology · Rock art · Petroglyphs · Pictographs

Introduction This volume documents the antiquity, ubiquity, and the various manifestations of beliefs in supernatural gamekeepers on a global level. Many societies hold the belief that supernatural gamekeepers or animal masters grant hunting success to those who faithfully perform specific rituals and who adhere to various restrictions prescribed R. J. Chacon (✉) Department of Sociology, Criminology, and Anthropology, Winthrop University, Rock Hill, SC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. J. Chacon (ed.), The History and Environmental Impacts of Hunting Deities, Conflict, Environment, and Social Complexity 4, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37503-3_1

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by these supernaturals. The central idea is that game animals cannot be killed without the permission of the Master of Animals. It is also believed that hunters who violate established harvesting restrictions may be punished in various ways that include a loss of hunting luck, sickness, and even death (Slotten 1965, 1966). Numerous case studies have documented the presence of a belief in animal masters in various societies throughout the world. For example, beliefs in such supernaturals have been recorded among the ancient Greeks (Chittenden 1947), the Celtic peoples of pre-Christian Europe (Arnold 2010), the Evenki of Siberia (Anisimov 1963), the Pygmies of Central Africa (Slotten 1966), the Ainu of Japan (Yamada 2013), the Katuic peoples of Laos and Vietnam (Århem 2014), the Innu of the Canadian Arctic (Loring 1996), the Cree of the Canadian boreal forest (Brightman 2002), the Shoshone of the Great Basin/Plains (Hulkrantz 1961a), the Cherokee (Loubser 2005), the Lake Atitlán Maya (Emery and Brown 2012), the Bribri and Cabécar of Costa Rica (Palmer et al. 1993), the Achuar (Shiwiar) of the Ecuadorian Amazon (Chacon 2012), and among Andean peoples (Arnold 2016) to name a few. Given this widespread distribution, there can be little doubt that the origins of beliefs in supernatural gamekeepers are of great antiquity. In fact, Campbell (1983:133) argues this very point: “. . . .Neanderthal Man’s veneration of. . .the Animal Master. . .developed as a tradition. . .[p]assing eastward across Siberia into America,. . .”.

Filling the Gap Despite this robust and ethnographically rich corpus of data on supernatural gamekeepers, to date, few wide-ranging cross-cultural comparisons of these supernaturals have been published (see Hultkrantz (1961b) and Slotten (1965, 1966)). Although these works shed valuable light on the characteristics and manifestations of animal masters, Hultkrantz’s (1961b) geographical coverage is relatively limited in scope. While Slotten’s publications provide a wealth of ethnographic data on supernatural gamekeepers, his contribution is marred by the fact that he considers supernatural gamekeepers as manifestations of a “high god” who is the “creator or presenter of the world” (Slotten 1966:2). Additionally, to date, no attempt has been made to assess (from a cross-cultural perspective) how adherence to beliefs in animal masters on the part of Indigenous foragers actually affects their harvesting of wild game. Several of the chapters in this volume fill this lacuna.

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Ecological Impact of the Beliefs in Supernatural Gamekeepers Various authors have investigated the ways in which hunters who believe in animal masters interact with their environment. Beliefs in supernatural gamekeepers and the adherence to the various behavioral restrictions that are concomitant with such beliefs should be considered as a form of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). It is often assumed that as long as Indigenous hunters harvest prey in accordance with the parameters prescribed by local TEK, the overharvesting of game will never take place. However, Chacon and Mendoza (2012) have documented the folly along with the dangers of assuming that traditional Indigenous foragers always hunt with sustainability in mind. As previously mentioned, this volume constitutes the first attempt (on a cross-cultural basis) to investigate how sustained beliefs in supernatural gamekeepers on the part of Indigenous hunters affect their interactions with wildlife. The findings from this publication will prove helpful to researchers and development managers who wish “to incorporate both the local environmental and cultural/ spiritual contexts in studies that inform biodiversity and sustainable resource-use management” (Read et al. 2010:213). The inclusion of such “spiritual contexts” (i.e., beliefs in supernatural gamekeepers) would embrace an understating of how beliefs in animal masters affect the harvesting patterns of Indigenous hunters. This understanding will provide anthropologists, biologists, wildlife managers, policymakers, and native stakeholders with the requisite data for designing and implementing effective community-based, long-term game management plans created to foster sustainable faunal harvests before wildlife depletion reaches critical levels. Thus, this volume will aid in the development of an “adapted management” regime (Hill and Padwe 2000:81) that may include the establishment of bag limits, no-take zones, and/or temporary moratoriums on harvesting depleted species in areas of concern. This effort would recognize the need for Indigenous collaboration that would incorporate TEK into any plan along with continual monitoring and appropriate adjustments in hunting to promote sustainable game harvests. Thus, the findings presented in this book will foster the creation of the aforementioned sustainable community-based development protocols that will be beneficial to Indigenous hunting peoples and conservationists alike. The adoption of such a stance will, hopefully, curb the disturbing rise in the number of “conservation refugees” that is currently taking place around the globe, as documented by Dowie (2009).

Chapter Summaries In Chap. 2, Mykhailova documents and analyzes the mythology of the Antlered Mother throughout Eurasia. Manifestations of this animal master include the DeerMother, Deer-Wife, Ancestress of People and Animals, Game Protector, and

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Patroness of Hunting, among others. Additionally, the author shows how these myths are depicted in rock art throughout the region. In Chap. 3, Jacobson-Tepfer documents the antiquity of a belief in supernatural beings that functioned as adjudicators of human fate. Represented on carved standing stones, within petroglyphs along the cliffs of South Siberian rivers, and within the rock art complexes of the Altai Mountains of Russia and Mongolia, these beings were initially depicted as female moose or as syncretic female/animal/bird figures. By the late Bronze Age, these images were replaced by the figure of a woman: the guardian of the road to the lands of the dead. Jacobson-Tepfer draws upon the ethnography of the Evenk and Ket peoples of Siberia to suggest the depth and complexity of her primary source, the prehistoric imagery from North Asia. In Chap. 4, Stein inverts the conventional approach to the Master of Animals in Old World Archaeology and suggests that the iconic combination of a hero and an animal adversary represents a conflation of two supernatural entities that are widely associated with foraging societies. Considering the evidence for shamans and animal guardians at two contrasting Neolithic sites, namely, Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük, she argues for cultural continuity between foraging and food-producing societies while emphasizing the distinct trajectories of these two supernaturals, each of which undergoes modification in response to social, economic, and environmental issues that arise on a local level as a result of neolithization. When the Master of Animals motif appears in pre-urban societies, the balance of power, which was originally distributed evenly between the two protagonists, shifts to the heroic human’s side. In Chap. 5, Dubey-Pathak documents the long-standing veneration of the Tiger God. Known to the various tribal peoples of Central India as Bhagan Deo, Baghbana, Baghasur, Baghaisur Baba, Baghaut Baba, or Kinnasum, sacrificial offerings are made to the animal master to this very day. Additionally, the author argues that the Tiger Lord motif is depicted in Central Indian rock art. Therefore, this rock art represents a continuation of ancestral beliefs and traditions relating to the belief in the Tiger God. In Chap. 6, Århem describes how Katuic-speaking upland groups of the Central Annamite region of Laos employ Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) to manage their forests. The local Indigenous peoples categorize large tracts of forest as “spirit areas” that are inhabited and controlled by local guardian spirits. Human activities are strongly circumscribed in these “spirit forests” by way of various taboos. This chapter shows that Katuic traditional landscape management significantly contributes to the high biodiversity of the Central Annamite forests. This chapter also sheds light on the existing tensions between conservationists, state development agencies, and the Indigenous groups in the region with regard to how local forests should be managed. In Chap. 7, Hitchcock analyzes the relationship between African hunter-gatherer shamans and supernatural gamekeepers. In some cases, these ritual specialists engage in specific shamanic activities that are believed to have a direct or indirect impact on hunting outcomes or on the environment (such as causing rain). Lastly, the author points out that there is evidence that beliefs in supernatural gamekeepers

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among African foraging peoples may serve to prevent the depletion of wildlife populations. In Chap. 8, Eppig shows how Saints Cuthbert and Hubert (Hubertus), known as “conservation saints” or as “holy enforcers” of wildlife conservation measures, can trace their origins back to ancient Celtic deities such as the Great Stag, personified as Cernunnos the shaman, Master of Animals, and to animal knowledge traditions associated with the Salmon, Keeper of Wisdom and Otter, Messenger to the Underworld. Furthermore, the author points out how these two repurposed supernatural gamekeepers fostered a reverence for nature during the Middle Ages. Lastly, Eppig documents how these two “holy enforcers” inspire many modern-day conservation efforts. In Chap. 9, Tiley examines the important role played by dugong (Dugong dugon) hunting in the lives of Boigu Islanders of the Torres Straits. Traditionally, hunters maintained a relationship, by way of various ritual measures, with the local supernatural gamekeeper who rewarded appropriate behavior with successful dugong hunts. The author also documents how Boigu Islanders’ Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) was incorporated into successful dugong conservation efforts managed by the Torres Strait Regional Authority. In Chap. 10, Johnson documents how the native peoples along the Pacific Coast of North America conducted rituals to obtain whales. The goal of such rites would have been to secure the assistance of a supernatural gamekeeper or an animal master. Ritual activities may have included the carving of whale effigies and rock art depicting whales. Chumash, Alaskan, and Northwest Coast shamans used whale effigies in rituals designed to summon whales to be hunted and/or to beach themselves. Many rock art sites along the coast between Alaska and Acapulco contain images depicting these marine mammals. Based on Native American oral tradition and a robust corpus of ethnographic evidence, in Chap. 11, Garfinkel links the rock art found at the Yahwe’era Kahniina pictograph site to the Kawaiisu supernatural gamekeeper named Yahwera. Located in the southern Sierra Nevada region of California, this particular site was considered to be Yahwera’s portal to his underworld abode. As an animal master, Yahwera was believed to watch over deer, bear, and other wild game and he was responsible for the regeneration of wild animals after human hunters bagged their prey. According to the Kawaiisu tradition, humans who visited Yahwera in the underworld would obtain hunting luck. In Chap. 12, Dye focuses on beliefs in animal–human relations in terms of supernatural gamekeepers and their associated charter myths, regalia, and ritual sodalities (i.e., secret societies) among the Indigenous peoples of eastern North America. These masters of animals free captive game animals for the benefit of humankind, typically granting health, power, and success to those who follow proper procedures and protocols by performing specific rituals and by adhering to various prescribed practices of supplication and veneration. Such beliefs served as disincentives to conservation and to sustainable wildlife-harvesting practices among eastern North American Indigenous people. Thus, the presence of ritual relations

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with supernatural gamekeepers did not prevent the overharvesting of targeted forms of wildlife. In Chap. 13, Fernández-Llamazares, Huanca, and Reyes-García document the socio-cosmology of supernatural gamekeepers among the Tsimane’ of the Bolivian Amazon. This investigation describes how the Tsimane’ create and maintain respectful reciprocal relationships with local animal masters through culturally prescribed rituals and taboos. The authors show how these deeply rooted beliefs affect Tsimane’ hunting practices. Moreover, the researchers argue that continued belief in supernatural gamekeepers/animal masters may have traditionally prevented the overharvesting of wild game. Lastly, this work records how traditional Tsimane’ beliefs are being eroded due to increased contact with Christian missionaries along with growing market articulation. In Chap. 14, Chacon investigates the belief in supernatural gamekeepers/animal masters of wildlife among the Munduruku (Wuy Jugu) of Brazil, the Tukano of Colombia, the Embera of Colombia, and the Achuar (Shiwiar) of Ecuador. The findings show that supernatural gamekeepers/animal masters are believed to grant success to hunters who adhere to prescribed restrictions. The findings also indicate that belief in supernatural gamekeepers/animal masters fosters sustainable game harvests. However, as socioeconomic and demographic conditions change in the Neotropics, continued belief in supernatural gamekeepers/animal masters may actually facilitate the overharvesting of wildlife by native peoples. In Chap. 15, Arnold examines how Andean herders and agriculturalists maintain relationships with local animal masters (often mountain guardians) by way of various sacrificial offerings. The author shows how these relationships, which are typically described as being reciprocal in nature, also have a punitive component that ensures the continuing moral obligations toward these supernatural beings. Andean ideas about gamekeepers underlie their notions about sustainability in this mountainous region today. In Chap. 16, Smith analyzes the information put forth in this volume from the perspective of an archaeologist. While reflecting on the antiquity and widespread occurrence of the belief in a supernatural gamekeeper, he concludes that such a belief was a nearly universal step in the historical trajectory from early animism to deism. In Chap. 17, Hames discusses the information presented in this publication on supernatural gamekeepers from the perspective of a cultural anthropologist. He concludes that there is no evidence to support the claim that belief in supernatural gamekeepers promotes conservation. In summary, this effort is not intended to be the final word on supernatural gamekeepers, but rather, one of the goals of this endeavor is to spur further investigation on this topic. Ideally, this future research should not only shed additional light on the occurrence through time and space of this belief but it should also analyze how a belief in supernatural gamekeepers/animal masters actually impacts human foraging decisions.

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References Anisimov, A.F. 1963. Cosmological Concepts of the People of the North. In Studies in Siberian Shamanism, ed. H. Michael, 157–229. Toronto: Arctic Institute of the North, University of Toronto. Århem, Nikolas. 2014. Forests, Spirits, and High Modernist Development. A Study of Cosmology and Change among the Katuic Peoples in the Uplands of Laos and Vietnam. Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology 55. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Arnold, Bettina. 2010. Beasts of the Forest and Beasts of the Field: Animal Sacrifice, Hunting Symbolism, and the Master of Animals in Pre-Roman Iron Age Europe. In The Master of Animals in Old World Iconography, ed. D. Counts and Bettina Arnold, 193–210. Budapest: Archaeolingua. Arnold, Denise Y. 2016. Territorios animados: Los ritos al Señor de los Animales como una base ética para el desarrollo productivo en los Andes. In Símbolos, desarrollo y espiritualidades. El papel de las subjetividades en la transformación social, ed. Á. Román-López, D. Heydi, and T. Galarza, 111–159. La Paz: ISEAT, Universidad PIEB. Brightman, Robert. 2002. Grateful Prey: Rock Cree Human-Animal Relationships. Regina, SK: University of Regina Press. Campbell, Joseph. 1983. The Way of the Animal Powers. Vol 1. Historical Atlas of World Mythology. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Chacon, Richard. 2012. Conservation or Resource Maximization? Analyzing Subsistence Hunting Among the Achuar (Shiwiar) of Ecuador. In The Ethics of Anthropology and Amerindian Research: Reporting on Environmental Degradation and Warfare, ed. R. Chacon and R. Mendoza, 311–360. New York: Springer. Chacon, Richard, and Rubén G. Mendoza. 2012. The Ethics of Anthropology and Amerindian Research: Reporting on Environmental Degradation and Warfare. New York: Springer. Chittenden, Jacqueline. 1947. The Master of Animals. Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 16 (2): 89–114. Dowie, Mark. 2009. Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples. Cambridge: MIT Press. Emery, Kitty, and Linda Brown. 2012. Maya Hunting Sustainability: Perspectives from the Past and Present. In The Ethics of Anthropology and Amerindian Research: Reporting on Environmental Degradation and Warfare, ed. R. Chacon and R. Mendoza, 79–116. New York: Springer. Hill, Kim, and Jonathan Padwe. 2000. Sustainability of Ache Hunting in the Mbaracayu Reserve, Paraguay. In Hunting for Sustainability in Tropical Forests, ed. J. Robinson and E. Bennet, 79–105. New York: Columbia University Press. Hultkrantz, Å. 1961a. The Masters of the Animals among the Wind River Shoshone. Ethnos 26 (4): 198–218. ———. 1961b. The Supernatural Owners of Nature. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiskell. Loring, Stephen. 1996. To Please The Animal Master: The Innu Hunting Way of Life. Tribal College: Journal of the American Indian Higher Education. February 15, 1996. Accessed (2/15/ 2023). https://tribalcollegejournal.org/author/sloring/ Loubser, Johannes. 2005. In Small Cupules Forgotten: Rock Markings, Archaeology, and Ethnography in the Deep South. In Discovering North American Rock Art, ed. L. Loendorf, C. Chippendale, and D. Whitley, 131–160. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Palmer, Paula, Juanita Sanchez, and Gloria Mayorga. 1993. Taking Care of Sibö’s Gifts: An Environmental Treatise from Costa Rica’s KéköLdi Indigenous Reserve. San Jose: Editorama, S.A. Read, J., J. Fragoso, K. Silvius, J. Luzar, H. Overman, A. Cummings, S. Giery, and L. Flamarion de Oliveira. 2010. Space, Place, and Hunting Patterns Among Indigenous Peoples of the Guyanese Rupununi Region. Journal of Latin American Geography 9 (3): 213–243.

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Slotten, Ralph. 1965. The Master of Animals: a Study in the Symbolism of Ultimacy in Primitive Religion. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 23: 293–302. ———. 1966. The Master of Animals: A Study in the Symbolism of Hunting Religion. Doctoral dissertation. Chicago: University of Chicago. Yamada, Hitoshi. 2013. The Master of Animals Concept of the Ainu. Cosmos 29: 127–140.

Dr. Richard J. Chacon is a Professor at Winthrop University. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Amazonia among the Yanomamö of Venezuela, the Yora of Peru and the Achuar (Shiwiar) of Ecuador. In the Andes, he worked among the Otavalo and Cotacachi Indians of Highland Ecuador. His research interests include indigenous subsistence strategies, natural resource conservation, belief systems, warfare, secret societies, the development of social complexity, collective action, optimal foraging theory, ethnohistory, ethics, and the effects of globalization on indigenous peoples.

Chapter 2

The Antlered Mother: From the Paleolithic to the Modern Era Nataliia Mykhailova

Abstract The mythological subjects of Deer-Mother or Deer-Wife, who play roles such as the ancestress of people and animals, the protector of game, and the patroness of hunting can be found throughout Eurasia. One such manifestation of this Mistress of Animals is the Antlered Mother who appeared in the Stone Age. This character was widespread in north Eurasian rock art in Neolithic times and persisted into the Bronze and Iron Ages. The totemic myth about the origin of humans and animals from a common ancestor was one of the most important and widespread mythological subjects of the Northern peoples, who, until modern times, were deer hunters. The most ancient story talks about a giant female being: the “AnimalMother.” Over time, the image of this totemic ancestor, the Great Mother, developed more human characteristics. There was a Saami, a mother-ancestress or Myandash-maiden, who had marital relations with reindeer. The Kirgiz tell stories about this Antlered Mother. Moreover, myths about Deer-Woman—the hostess of animals—have survived in Caucasian mythology. The subject of the Antlered Goddess is extremely popular in Britain. The character of the British Deer-Woman reflects all developmental stages of the ancient totemic ancestor image. Despite their origins in antiquity, stories about these mythological beings have been preserved in folk traditions and some persist to this day. This investigation mines the existing archaeological and mythological datasets in an effort to shed light on these animal masters. Keywords Cult of the deer · Mythology · Upper Paleolithic · Neolithic · Bronze Age · Iron Age · Deer-Mother · Deer-Wife · Deer-Goddess · Game Protector · Patroness of Hunting · Culture hero · Animal Master

N. Mykhailova (✉) National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. J. Chacon (ed.), The History and Environmental Impacts of Hunting Deities, Conflict, Environment, and Social Complexity 4, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37503-3_2

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Introduction Images of deer deities, such as those of the Deer-Mother, Deer-Wife, ancestress of people, and/or game protector, appear throughout Eurasia. Additionally, these animal masters occupy important places in the local mythology, especially the DeerMother. The notion of the Deer-Mother is preserved most fully, in the mythology of the circumpolar peoples (such as the Nganasany, Evenki, and Saami) who hunted deer until the nineteenth century. Deer (reindeer in the tundra and moose in the forest zone) have been the animals of main economic and social importance to northern hunters until recently. The major mythological motifs of the Deer-Mother were formed in the Stone Age, and these have persisted in the mytho-ritual consciousness of the modern-day circumpolar peoples. At the same time, the motif of the Deer-Mother or the patroness of hunting, is known in the mythology of the nomadic and agricultural peoples of Europe, Asia Minor, and Central Asia. These themes, originating among hunting and gathering societies, were preserved in ideology after the transition to agriculture, and they evolved in accordance with the new economic circumstances. Archaeological data from Eurasia will help shed light on the origin and development of the concept of the Antlered Mother among hunting and gathering societies. The earliest research on animal masters, including Antlered Mothers among the Saami, was conducted by a Russian ethnologist and evolutionist named Nikolay Charusin in 1890. Soviet ethnographers Arkadiy Anisimov (1958), Vladimir Charnolusskiy (1965), Saul Abramzon (1971), Elena Virsaladze (1976), Maryana Khlobystina (1987), Boris Dolgikh (1976), and Yuriy Simchenko (1976), also studied deer myths in northern Europe, Siberia, Mongolia, Kirgizia, and Georgia. Joseph G. MacKay (1932), Maria Gimbutas (1991), Nikos Chausidis (1994), Ann Ross (1996) and Esther-Yakobson-Tepfer (1993, 2015) studied images of the Deer and Deer-Mother in mythology and art of Europe and Northern Asia. Images of Deer-Goddesses in rock art and sculpture were investigated by Alexey Okladnikov (1950, 1966), Okladnikov and Vasilevskij (1980), Yuriy Savvateev (1970), Nina Gurina (1979), Evgeniy Kolpakov and Vladimir Shumkin (2012), Vladimir Markovin (2006), Vladimir Kubarev (2007), and Nataliia Mykhailova (2006, 2008, 2015, 2017, 2018a, b).

Mythology The totemic myth of the origin of humans and animals coming from a common ancestor was one of the most important and widespread mythological themes of the Northern peoples. Research indicates that totemic ancestors served as mediators between the sacred and profane worlds (i.e., the world of living humans and dead animals). A most ancient Nganasan story talks about a giant zoo-anthropomorphic

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female being, an Animal-Mother (after Anisimov 1958:104). This individual, from this archaic Nganasan myth, undergoes transformation into the Earth-Mother or Mou-Nyamy, the subsurface Ice-Mother, Sun-Mother, Reindeer-Mother, and so on (Simchenko 1976:264–274). The evolution of Mou-Nyamy (Earth-Mother) reflects the stages of totemic myth development. First, she started out as a giant female reindeer. Later, Mou-Nyamy transformed into an anthropomorphic being who gave birth to Earth. The first inhabitant of Earth was the male deer, culture hero, and deer deity named Diaybango (Khlobystina 1987:264–274). An extremely ancient Nenets story talks about two antlered women, who gave birth to fawns for the benefit of hunting people. According to Evenki mythology, there once was a giant female elk, the Great Elk-Mother or Mother of Animals, named Bugady-Eninteen (Anisimov 1958:104). The image of this Great Elk-Mother Bugady-Eninteen is depicted on the sacred Bugady Rocks where ritual activities have been conducted from the Neolithic into the modern era (Anisimov 1958:104; Okladnikov 1950:317). The Evenkian Shinkgelavun ritual was conducted near the Bugady Rocks that were believed to be the dwelling place of spirits. The reason for this spring rite of intensification was to guarantee hunter success and to bolster deer reproduction. The ritual included a shaman hiking to the abode of the ancestral goddess (a giant female deer) or the holder of deer herds. There, the shaman would supernaturally “catch” the deer with a lasso, and, he would then lead the animals to an area where they could be hunted (see Fig. 2.1). Sometimes, a shaman would steal the deer that were transformed into pieces of wool and were hidden in his drum. Subsequently, he would release the deer so that they could be hunted. The second part of the ritual included a performance. The shaman together with disguised hunters would imitate deer. They did this in order to entice real animals onto hunting areas. Afterward, the hunters made models of a coupling and pregnant deer out of twigs and shrubbery. During the final part of this ritual, hunters would stalk an actual deer and then kill and dismember it. In turn, they would distribute parts of the hunted animal amongst themselves. Then, the skin would be hung on the pole as a sacrificial offering to the spirit (Anisimov 1958:30). Over time, the image of the totemic ancestor evolved and it was endowed with more human characteristics (Krinichnaya 1988:31). In this manner, the common template of the myth or monomyth, following Joseph Campbell (1949), was formed. Its structure is associated with the universal rite of passage formula of separation— passage (limen)—regeneration (Van Gennep, 1960). The stages of the myth are: (1) departure (also separation), (2) initiation, and (3) return (Campbell 1949). Along these lines, the stages of totemic hunter myths are: (1) departure from the animal world for human society, (2) ordeal: initiation, death (real or symbolic), and (3) return to the animal world (Mykhailova 2017). Totemic ancestors can easily change their shape, which symbolizes their transition between worlds. This transition is identical to the rite of passage events of initiation, marriage, and death (Petrukhin 1986:3). The best example of this sort of transition can be found in the Saami myth of the Myandash people. This group lived in a mythological place that was separated from the land of the Saami by a river of blood called the Myandash River. At this location lived the Ancestral Mother, a

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Fig. 2.1 Evenki drawing from the twentieth century depicting a shaman’s journey to the dwelling place of Bugady Eninteen: 1—Bugady Eninteen with her husband; 2, 5—fence with deer—the ownership of Bugady Eninteen; 3—shaman with lasso; 4—deer, which represents ancestral spirits bugady (Anisimov 1958)

Myandash-maiden named Mattarahkka. This woman could transform herself into a female reindeer and she would have marital relations with male reindeer. She gave birth to a male calf, which became a male Myandash and a Saami culture hero. This male supernatural being taught people how to hunt deer and formulated hunting laws (Charnolusskiy 1965:97). His transition into the human form is in keeping with the

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Fig. 2.2 Saami view of the cosmos (Mulk and BaylissSmith 2007)

building of dwellings made from deer bones (Charnolusskiy 1965:37). Myandash spoked to his mother saying, “Mother, we’ll live in the hut from reindeer skins: the doorstep will be made from cervical vertebra, roof from the ribs, pillars from the legs. . .” (Charnolusskiy 1965:37). This statement is probably an allusion to the zoomorphic and totemic buildings that were built from animal bones (after Propp 1986:39, 45–46). Initiations were held in such buildings (Eliade 1961:257–261; Petrukhin 1986:7; Propp 1986:39, 45–46). The transformation of the deer into the abovementioned male Myandash (and a Saami culture hero) along with his marriage to a woman took place in this type of zoomorphic dwelling. This legend also mentions the marital connection of Myandash with the woman: “Big Stag entered the house; turned into the man . . . They had dinner and went to bed. . .” (Charnolusskiy 1965:37) (Fig. 2.2). The motif of the dwelling made from deer bones is also found in Ukrainian and Romanian folklore. This is connected to marriage and death, which signifies a transition between worlds. In Romanian Christmas carols, the stag crosses a river carrying a little bed between his antlers and there is a beautiful maiden laying on the bed. She asks: “Make my wedding with your flesh, build my house with your bones, make the roof with your hide, paint it with your blood, fix your skull on my gate, make drinking cups of your hooves” (Gimbutas 1991:115; Mykhailova 2017). The deer crossing a river signifies the crossing of a border between worlds (i.e., passing

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Fig. 2.3 Parturient antlered deity and reindeer. Northern Russian embroideries (after Rybakov 1981)

on to the next life) while the beautiful maiden transported in the antlers is a wedding symbol (Mykhailova 2017:59; Mykhailova 2019:133). Another key moment of the myth is the violation of a taboo by the wife of the male Myandash, and this transgression causes conflict between the human and animal worlds. His wife turns into a female reindeer and she becomes the founder of the Saami, a Progenitor-Mother (Charnolusskiy 1965:72). Eventually, her identity merges with that of the Myandash-maiden. The theme of the female deer as a totemic ancestor persists in the mythology of the agricultural/pastoralist peoples (see Fig. 2.3). The pastoralist Kirgiz have stories about the Antlered Mother Muyuz-Baybiche, which possess the same theme. That is, that the transition between worlds is marked by getting married, entering a dwelling, and experiencing conflict. A woman married a human. She secretly transforms herself into a deer and hides in a dwelling. When her husband spied on her, she was offended and turned herself into a deer and escaped to the forest (i.e., the world of animals and of the dead). This Deer-Woman became an ancestress of the Kyrgyz Bugu tribe (the word “bugu” means deer among the Turkic peoples) (Abramzon 1971:281–283; Mykhailova 2008, 2017:61). Myths about the Deer-Woman or mistress of the animals persist in Caucasian mythology. The Georgian hostess of animals is called Dali. A hunter saw a deer-like woman in the forest, tracked her down, and had sexual relations with her. Returning home, he told his wife about his encounter with the Deer-Woman, which was a violation of a taboo. Therefore, Dali took revenge by killing the hunter. The Circassians and Ossetians have the same mythological theme (Virsaladze 1976:34). Artemis is the Greek goddess of hunts, wild animals, and chastity along with assisting women in childbirth. Her image was associated with the doe. Once the hunter Akteon, after tracking and gazing upon the naked and beautiful Artemis (an allusion to marital relations), boasted about this encounter to his friends. Since this was a violation of a taboo, Artemis became irritated and transformed Akteon into

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a stag and his own hunting dogs ripped him to pieces because they did not know that this animal was their master (Graves 1990). The subject of the Antlered Goddess is highly popular in Britain. These are females who own herds and milk the animals while caring for them (Mackay 1932:147). Whether as a Mother-Goddess, Earth-Goddess, Deer-Goddess, or as the Goddess of the Dead, the Irish Cailleach is clearly a highly complicated supernatural being (Mackay 1932:152). The Deer-Goddess protected female deer as their survival was critically important to herds (Wiseman 2007:353). In many tales, a hunter who had been stalking a deer, when aiming his gun, observed that the targeted animal had transformed itself into a woman. Subsequently, the hunter falls in love with her. Mackay (1932:156) posits that this tale is a folk memory of a pagan ritual during the course of which the deer-priestess would don the hide of a deer with antlers and hooves attached. In his interpretation, most likely, Mackay wishes to emphasize the totemic origin and fertility-related theme of the myth. An eleventh century legend belonging to the tradition of Fionn Mac Cumhaill talks about Blái Dheirg (Sadhbh), the mother of Oisín, who generally appeared in the form of a doe and gave birth to a poet and warrior named Oisín. Therefore, it is fitting that he is referred to as “Little Fawn” (Beck 2009). This mythological theme is similar to the Saami myth of the Myandash-maiden and the male Myandash (a cultural hero of the Saami). Lastly, it is important to note that the image of the Horned Goddess remains highly popular in British neo-pagan and feminist circles. The contemporary neo-pagan worship of Elen of the Ways conflates the characteristics of the Antlered Goddess with those of Saint Helena (mother of the Emperor Constantine). According to the legend, Elen of the Ways created the network of roads in Wales on top of the ancient migratory tracks of reindeer (Shaw 2016).

Archaeological Data The roots of the deer cult can be traced to ancient Stone Age hunter-gatherers. This was a time when reindeer played a dominant role in the economy of foraging peoples. Thus, depictions of deer are prominent in the image repertoire of Upper Paleolithic rock art and sculptures of the Franco-Cantabria area. Evidence indicating the presence of a totemic deer cult in this region include numerous depictions of female deer on cave walls and on the shoulder blades of deer (see Altamira, Gourdan, El Castillo Caves) (Quiros 1991:85; Mykhailova 2017:212). The most ancient visual evidence of the Deer-Mother can be found on an Upper Paleolithic antler fragment. The image in question is one of a pregnant woman and a reindeer from the Laugerie-Basse rock shelter in France (see Fig. 2.4). I hold that this image suggests an Upper Paleolithic belief in the existence of marital relationships between humans and deer. A further blurring of the human–animal boundary can be seen in the Stone Age Venus of Tolentino, which was found in Tolentino, Italy. This artifact dates to a period between 5000 and 12,000 years ago and it represents a

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Fig. 2.4 Pregnant Deer Mother depicted on a deer antler. Laugerie Basse Cave, France. Upper Paleolithic (photo by Alexandr Yanevich)

zoo-anthropomorphic being with a female body with the head of an herbivore (Massi et al. 1997) (possibly a cervid’s head). The image of the female deer/elk became an important symbol in the Mesolithic and Neolithic rock art of northern Europe and Siberia (Studziczkaya 2004:246). An elk-like Eninteen-Bugady was depicted on the aforementioned sacred Bugady Rocks in East Siberia during the Neolithic (Anisimov 1958:104; Okladnikov 1950:317; 1966). Alexey Okladnikov suggests that pictographs were an important ritual component at sanctuaries such as the one found at Evenki’s sacred Bugady Rocks—the dwelling place of the mythical Elk-Mother Eninteen-Bugady (see Fig. 2.5) (Okladnikov 1972). Numerous depictions of women with antlers or deer’s ears are known throughout northern Europe (particularly Russia) and Asia (especially eastern Siberia) (Kolpakov and Vladimir Shumkin 2012:161–164; Okladnikov 1950; Savvateev 1970:396, fig. 106). See Fig. 2.6 for zoo-anthropomorphic figures depicted with deer. There is a universal rock art subject called the “parturient woman and deer” (Jacobson 2001; Kubarev 2007). This theme became widespread in northern Eurasian rock art during the Neolithic and persisted into the Bronze and Iron Ages. There are numerous depictions of pregnant women near reindeer on petroglyph panels in northern Russia, Siberia, and Mongolia. At the Chalmn-Varre rock art site, a woman giving birth to a calf is depicted (Rybakov 1981). The Chalmn-Varre complex is situated in the area where the Myandash myth is found. At the Chuluut site in Mongolia, petroglyphs of the Bronze Age depict an antlered parturient woman leading a dance of pregnant women who are in the presence of fawns (see Fig. 2.7) (Gracheva 1990:107). The deer cult evolved after the transition from hunting and gathering to an agricultural/pastoralist economy. The worship of deer deities took place among many ancient cultures. For example, this practice occurred in the Near East, the Caucasus, and the Iberian Peninsula. A Hittite ritual involving deer was depicted on a silver/gold rhyton shaped in the form of a stag. This artifact, which dates to c. 1400–1300 BC, is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (see Fig. 2.8) (Collins 2005:32). The main figure on the rhyton is a seated deity,

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Fig. 2.5 Pictograph featuring a female cervid (likely a moose) with her calf. Angara River, Siberia. Neolithic period (Okladnikov 1966)

probably a goddess. A tree appears behind the goddess, and a dead deer is depicted under the tree. This dead animal was probably a sacrificial offering (see Fig. 2.9) (Güterbock 1989:137–141). It is quite possible that the female featured on this Hittite rhyton is Innara, the goddess of fertility and nature. “In the [Hittite] festivals, Innara is depicted as having the features of the Goddess of the Hunt, and also as the Mistress of the Animals (Haas 1994:437).” “Probably, this youthful supernatural being [standing on the stag] is Kurunta, the Hittite god of wild animals and of hunting. Kurunta’s insignia was the deer” (Haas 1994:84, 111, 144, 535). According to Collins (2010:66), “In Hittite texts the God on the Stag is a Tutelary Deity. To complicate matters, by the time of Tudhaliya IV, Innara and Kuruntiya were no longer separate deities, as indicated by the fact that both Innara and Kuruntiya underlie ‘CERVUS’ in the Hieroglyphic writing of the Stag God of the King.” During the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, the archetype of the Mistress of Animals was embodied in the iconographic image of Pontia Theron, a female figure grasping two animals. This ancient art motif was widespread in the Mediterranean and the Near East. Images of a woman with two deer or chamois in her hands are widely known. Furthermore, the concept of Pontia Theron is connected to Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt and fertility. As a rule, this goddess is shown in association with red or fallow deer. The characteristics of Pontia Theron reappear in the depiction of Argimpasa from the Scythian Alexandropol Mound in Ukraine’s

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Fig. 2.6 Zooanthropomorphic figures with deer. Chalmn-Varre (Northern Russia) (Rybakov 1981)

Dnipro region (see Fig. 2.10) (Polin and Alexeev 2018). The goddess appears in a frontal position seated on two deer. According to Bessonova (1983:88, 89), this Scythian goddess of human and animal fertility shares some iconographic features with that of the Mistress of Animals of the Near East. The Deer-Goddess has persisted in the mythological tradition into the medieval period. Depictions of Deer-Women that sometimes appear with fertility symbols are found in medieval Caucasian rock art panels (see Fig. 2.11) (Markovin 2006).

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Fig. 2.7 Totemic subject. Parturient women depicted with fawns. Chuluut, Mongoliia (Gracheva 1990)

Fig. 2.8 Hittite silver rhyton in the form of a stag. [Vessel terminating in the forepart of a stag ca. fourteenth–thirteenth century B.C.] Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

Fig. 2.9 This scene appears on the Hittite silver rhyton. It depicts a goddess engaging in ritual activity. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

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Fig. 2.10 Depiction of Argimpasa from the Scythian Alexandropol Mound in the Ukraine (Polin and Alexeev 2018). In this instance, this Scythian goddess is featured as the Mistress of Animals

Two statues from Gaul that feature antlered goddesses from the Clermont-Ferrand and Besançon areas bear a dedicatory inscription (originating from Dobrteša, Croatia) to the goddess Carvonia, whose name literally means “doe.” Additionally, in the eleventh or twelfth century, Irish legends dating back to Celtic times talk of deer shape-shifting goddesses that are suggestive of the belief in the existence of a DeerGoddess (Beck 2009).

Discussion It is important to note that the concept of the Deer/Elk-Mother or Great Ancestress of People and Animals, which was formed in the mytho-ritual consciousness of ancient hunter-gatherers, was quite fluid. Archaeological evidence indicates that zoomorphic (see Altamira and El Castillo Caves) (Mykhailova 2017), zoo-anthropomorphic (see Venus of Tolentino) (Massi et al. 1997), and anthropomorphic (see Laugerie-Basse rock shelter) (Mykhailova 2017:99) iconographic embodiments appear in Upper Paleolithic art. Female elk became a major ideological symbol during the Eurasian Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. This was manifested in numerous rock art images and sculptures (Studzitskaya 2004:46). Female elk-like deities of Eurasian circumpolar peoples had certain “messengers” on Earth who served as mediators between humans and supernaturals. These messenger spirits inhabited in sacred rocks, unusually large boulders and/or special trees. Such spirit messengers could influence the behavior of deer. People made offerings to these spirits at designated sacred locations. Skulls, bones, and deer/elk antlers along with hunting weapons, tools for starting fires, butchering knives, cauldrons for cooking wild game, and deer

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Fig. 2.11 Caucasian depictions of Deer-Women from the Medieval Period. Dagestan (Markovin 2006)

sculptures were left as precious gifts for supernaturals at specific sacred sites into the twentieth century (Mykhailova, 2017:41–44; Simchenko 1976:254–256). The Nganasani offered reindeer to Baby-Niamy (Wild Reindeer-Mother) and they ate the meat, took the skin with them, and put the reindeer’s head on a pole (Dolgix 1960:74). The Nenets’ sacred site of Hebidia E is typical of other sacred locations throughout northwestern Siberia. At these locations, reindeer were killed and their heads and antlers were piled up (Uspenskij 1979:36–39). Similarly, the Saami piled up reindeer antlers in caves, canyons, or on islands. At one location, the accumulation of antlers occupied an entire island (Charusin 1890:66–67). Most likely, depictions of horned humans and/or human beings coupling with deer in northern European and Siberian rock art represent manifestations of totemic myths. Such images were possibly created during the rituals of deer increase/ regeneration (rites of intensification). Robust deer herds would, in turn, serve to support a healthy population that would exist in balance with the environment. The zoomorphic Mother was a guarantor of this balance. The image of “parturient woman and deer” testifies to the existence of this ancient hunter-gatherer motif

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involving marital relationships between human beings and deer. For example, if we compare the Myandash-maiden image with the Deer-Woman coupling depictions from Franco-Cantabria and northern Eurasia, it is reasonable to assume that due to their similarities, this motif has its origins in the most archaic stage of the deer hunting myth–ritual complex. According to the mythological themes found among northern European and Siberian Indigenous peoples, we can trace the most ancient subjects of the deer hunting monomyth: separation from the animal world–transition to the human world–existence in the human form (which creates conflict)–return to the animal world (Mykhailova 2017:58–61). Totemic ancestors can easily change their shape, which signals their ability to transition between worlds. This transition is identical to the rite of passage events: initiation, marriage, and death (Petrukhin 1986:3). The iconographic variability of the Deer/Elk-Mother depictions reflects her ability to easily transition between worlds. One can study the mythology of northern European and north Asian huntergatherers without much difficulty. However, when comparing hunter-gatherer ideologies with those held by agricultural/pastoralist peoples, one should be mindful of the fact that changes in economic strategies most likely fueled shifts in ideological systems. Thus, it is reasonable to view the myths presented in this chapter as derivatives of ancient ideas that were incorporated into new economic and ideological systems. Reminiscent of the hunter’s deer cult is the rich mythology and art of the Caucasian peoples. Many images of deer and humans are depicted on artifacts from the Bronze Age Trialeti culture of the late third and early second millennia BC (Narimanishvili 2015:69) and from the Bronze Age Koban culture that existed from c. 1100 to 400 BC (Kozenkova 1977). There are several male and female manifestations of the animal master in Caucasian mythology, which appear in rock art and metal artwork. The most well-known example is Georgian Dali – the mistress of wild animals and the patroness of hunting. Dali is probably connected to Inara of the Hittite–Hurrian mythology. This supernatural being was the goddess of wild animals, and she appears to have been similar to the Greek goddess Artemis, a huntress who lived in wilderness areas (Gurney 1977). Artemis’ association with deer points to one of her two roles: The first aspect of her nature as a goddess can be seen in how she is often depicted holding a young, crouching female deer in her arms with its head pressed against her breast. This seems to refer to her role as a nurturer and protector of the young and innocent. However, the second aspect of Artemis can be seen in figurines where she is shown grasping adult deer by the legs or tail or sometimes holding a bow. This manifestation is that of Artemis as Pontia Theron, the huntress or the goddess of hunting (Nosch 2009:18–19). Virsaladze (1976:117–118) analyzes the aforementioned the myth of Artemis and the hunter Akteon. As previously mentioned, the young hunter observed the beautiful goddess bathing and as punishment for this offence, Artemis turned the young man into deer. In turn, the hunter was torn asunder by his dogs. Virsaladze interprets this event as bearing an interesting similarity to the marital relations between Dali

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and the hunter. Additionally, the image of the Antlered Goddess was most fully preserved in Celtic mythology. In short, the character of the Deer-Woman reflects all stages of the development of an ancient totemic ancestor image.

Conclusions This chapter has traced the development of the mythological human–deer motif as Deer-Mother, Deer-Wife, Antlered Goddess, or Antlered Mother over time. The most archaic image, that of the deer-like or zoo-anthropomorphic Mother-Ancestress, was depicted in Stone Age art. With the evolution of this concept, various anthropomorphic features from a totemic ancestor were imparted on this Mistress of Animals. In this manner, the theme of the totemic monomyth was formed. It corresponded with the rite of passage formula of separation: passage–transition– regeneration. The image of the zoomorphic ancestress bifurcated into male and female manifestations. The man-deer had the functions of a culture hero, a teacher of hunters, and a Master of Animals, whereas the woman-deer became the Mother of People and Deer, the guarantor of an animal’s security, fertility, and regeneration. Additionally, this supernatural being can easily cross the border between worlds. The change of appearance is connected to rites of passage such as initiation/marriage, death, or conflict due to some taboo violation. After the transition from a hunting and gathering way of life to an agricultural/ pastoralist economy, this Deer-Mother transformed into a patroness of the harvest and human fertility. Lastly, these motif changes are visible in rock art throughout Eurasia.

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———. 2019. Reministsentsii pervisnogo kultu olenia u folklori Ukrainy i Tsentralnoi ta Skhidnoi Evropy. In Mizhnarodnyi konhres ukrainistiv. Folklorystyka. Ukrainozavstvo, ed. Sergiy Pirozhkov, Hanna Sytnik, and Anatoliy Zahorodniy, 128–138. Kyiv: Naukova dumka. Narimanishvili, Dimitry. 2015. Mytho-Religious View of the World in the Middle Bronze Age South Caucaus. Synopsis of the PhD Thesis in Archaeology, Tbilisi. https://www.academia.edu/291 80790/Mytho_Religious_View_of_the_World_in_the_Middle_Bronze_Age_South_Caucasus. Nosch, Marie Louize. 2009. Approaches to Artemis in Bronze Age Greece. From Artemis to Diana. The Goddess of Man and Beast. 21–40. ed. Tobias Fischer-Hansen and Birte Poulsen. Acta Hyperborea. Danish Studies in Classical Archaeology, 12. Okladnikov, Alexey. 1950. Neolit i brozovy vek Pribaykal’a. Materialy I issledovaniia po arheologii SSSR, 18. ———. 1966. Petroglify Angary. Moskva-Leningrad: Nauka. Okladnikov, A.P., and R.S. Vasilevskij. 1980. Severnaya Aziya na zare istorii. Novosibirsk: Nauka. Sibirskoe otdelenie. Okladnikov, A.P., and V.D. Zaporozhskaya. 1972. Petroglify Srednej Leny. Leningrad: Nauka. Petrukhin, Vladimir. 1986. Chelovek i zhivotnoe v mife i rituale: mir prirody` vsimvolakh mira kul’tury` Mify`, kul’ty`, obryady’narodov zarubezhnoj Azii: 5–26. Moskva: Glavnaya redakcziya vostochnoj literatury`. Polin, Sergey, and Andrey Alexeev. 2018. Skifskij czarskij Aleksandropolskij kurgan IV v do ne v Nizhnem Podneprovie. Kiev-Berlin. Propp, Vladimir. 1986. Istoricheskie korni volshebnoj skazki. Leningrad: Izdatelstvo LGU. Quiros, Federico Bernaldo. 1991. Reflections of the Art of the Cave of Altamira. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Societies 57: 81–91. Ross, Ann. 1996. Pagan Celtic Britain, Studies in Iconography and Tradition. Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers. Rybakov, B. 1981. Yazy`chestvo drevnikh slavyan. Moskva: Nauka. Savvateev, Yuriy. 1970. Zalavruga. Leningrad: Nauka. Shaw, Judith. 2016. Elen of the ways. September, 28, 2016. https://feminismandreligion.com/201 6/09/28/elen-of-the-ways-by-judith-shaw/ Simchenko, Yuriy. 1976. Kul’tura okhotnikov na olenej Severnoj Evrazii. Moskva: Nauka. Studziczkaya, S.V. 2004. Izobrazhenie losya v melkoj plastike lesnoj Evrazii. Epokha neolita i rannej bronzy. In Izobrazitelnye pamyatniki. Stil, epokha, kompoziczii, 25–31. SanktPeterburg: Istoricheskij fakultet Spb GU. Uspenskij, S.M. 1979. Gibidei ritualnye zhertvenniki nenczev. Priroda 7: 36–40. Van Gennep, Arnold. 1960. The Rites of Passage. London: Psychology Press. Virsaladze, Elena. 1976. Grusinki ohotnichiy mif i poesia. Moskva: Nauka. Wiseman, A. 2007. Chasing the Deer: Hunting Iconography, Literature and Tradition of the Scottish Highlands. Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh.

Dr. Nataliia Mykhailova is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Archaeology of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. She has conducted archaeological investigations throughout Europe and Asia. Her research interests include Stone Age archaeology, ethnography, prehistoric society, ancient art and beliefs with a special emphasis on the cult of the deer among ancient European and North Asian hunters.

Chapter 3

Spirit Forces and Liminal Beings in North Asian Rock Art Esther Jacobson-Tepfer

Abstract In the case of prehistoric cultures, the identification of animal helpers or adjudicators of human fate is both complicated and uncertain. There are sources, however, that can indicate appropriate approaches to this problem. Within prehistoric cultures of South Siberia and northwestern Mongolia, both rock art in the form of carved monoliths and imagery pecked into cliffs and boulders offer tangible evidence of a long, if broken, tradition of syncretic beings mediating human existence between life and death. These beings seem to have combined elements of female animals (moose, elk, aurochs) and birds. In their earliest appearances, they took the form of either naturalistic animals associated with the flow of rivers or monstrous beings that were part female, part aurochs or bear. In their latest incarnations, however, they had acquired the form of a human female, the guardian of the road to the land of the dead. The interpretation of these rock-pecked images— gathered from several major petroglyphic complexes in the Russian and Mongolian Altai and from sites in South Siberia—can be supported by comparing them to archaic mythic traditions and cults gathered by ethnographers from surviving Siberian peoples. Keywords Rock art · South Siberia · Altai Mountains · Syncretic females beings · Bird-women Prehistoric rock art almost invariably raises the question of meaning: What was the purpose of those animals, people, and strange signs pecked into obdurate stone? Can we assume that the images are what they seem: simple replications of the natural and known worlds? Or were they meant to convey relationships and significations now lost in time? Although in most aspects of our lives, we assume that what we see is what is meant, when pictorial signs are designated “prehistoric,” then this basic rationality tends to fade away. We become convinced that there must be some other E. Jacobson-Tepfer (✉) University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. J. Chacon (ed.), The History and Environmental Impacts of Hunting Deities, Conflict, Environment, and Social Complexity 4, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37503-3_3

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Fig. 3.1 Aurochs. Paleolithic. BO II. Photograph: Gary Tepfer

meaning and that the image of a duck is not just a duck but rather something considerably more significant.1 The contributors to this volume have been asked to analyze the beliefs in supernatural gamekeepers or animal masters within traditional societies. The North Asian societies I have been asked to consider are not simply “traditional;” they are rather prehistoric, invisible within the documentation of historical cultures and archaeologically uncertain. This affects the way in which we read the surviving documentation provided by rock art. The pecked images have no names, except those we impose; they hold no powers, except those we infer. Without words to identify the parameters of possible reference, a single object or image could reflect one or more of many references. For example, consider a late Ice Age image of a powerful aurochs2 from Baga Oigor in the Altai Mountains of Mongolia (Fig. 3.1). For the artist, the image might simply have been the representation of an aurochs, hard to kill but good to eat; or it might have signified an event—the hunt itself; or it may have been a pictorial measure of animal power and, in this respect, a metaphor for supernatural vitality. It may have been what we call a totem, but without really understanding what this word would mean in ancient North Asia, or this image may 1

Maps relevant to the following discussion can be found in Jacobson-Tepfer (2015, Maps 1.1–2.1). Mapping and discussion of the physical and archaeological geography of the Bayan-Ölgiy aimag can be found in the following resource: Jacobson-Tepfer, Meacham, and Tepfer, Archaeology and Landscape in the Mongolian Altai: An Atlas. 2 Aurochs is the common name of Bos primigenius, a long-extinct species of wild cattle. Aurochs probably died out in North Asia long before their disappearance from Europe.

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have referred to the aurochs as some kind of adjudicator of human fate. Without any written sources, we have few clues to guide our inquiry into the meaning of this or any other prehistoric imagery. In the following pages, I consider several questions related to the concepts of spirit forces and adjudicators of human fate within the context of archaeological materials from South Siberia and northwestern Mongolia. However, in considering these materials and the larger cultural context, several questions are raised. Can any beings that might be described as supernatural gamekeepers or animal adjudicators of human fate be found in the rock art and standing stones of this region earlier than the Iron Age? How can we recognize them and their powers on the basis of pictorial elements alone? These questions lead to others: Are we modern observers even capable of recognizing ancient fluidity and continuity between states of being, both human and animal? We can examine this material from a dispassionate scientific perspective, but does that allow us to grasp the power behind images that are strange, clumsy, or pictorially inexpressive? Perhaps, most fundamentally, when we identify an image as a possible adjudicator of human fate, is it possible that the image actually points beyond itself to a nexus of powers that are critical to human survival within an extremely harsh environment? That is, are we looking for actual image types or for processes? The materials referred to in the following pages have been documented within the northern Altai Mountains, the mountainous terrain of the upper and middle Yenisei River and its tributaries, and along a number of rivers, such as the Tom’ and Angara, which thread their way north through the Siberian taiga. This region is admittedly vast, but it is united by several common denominators. All the rock art complexes and standing stones lie along or within the immediate vicinity of rivers ultimately flowing to the north. Ancient inhabitants of this region depended on hunting and fishing until the middle Bronze Age (second millennium BCE) when environmental change catalyzed the appearance of herding as a dominant way of life. Until the late Bronze Age (beginning from the first millennium BCE), this part of North Asia remained quite separate from the emergence of powerful states such as those of China, India, and the ancient Near East. Thus, the only visual texts that guide us are rock-pecked images, carved stele, and stone monuments. Across this region and from the Late Pleistocene onward, most petroglyphic imageries have been naturalistic. In pre-Bronze and early Bronze Age South Siberia, the most striking examples of such naturalism are found in large panels of moose (Alces alces), elk (Cervus elaphus), and aurochs (Bos primigenius). The earliest of these images, from the Angara and Tom rivers, are female moose (Fig. 3.2).3 With powerful bodies and outstretched necks, they seem to be striding either up or down the river, as if following the water’s current. With time, they were replaced 3

Okladnikov (1966) and Okladnikov and Martynov (1972). The great Angara images were destroyed in the creation of a huge reservoir on the upper Angara River. Those from the so-called Tomskaya Pisanitsa were no less impressive, but they have been badly damaged by the attentions of both archaeologists and tourists. For an overview and analysis of these and related petroglyphs in South Siberia, see Savinov (2006) and Jacobson-Tepfer (2015, pp. 28–41).

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Fig. 3.2 Panel of petroglyphic images including cow moose and seals. Eneolithic or early Bronze Age. From Second Stone Island, Angara River, Irkutsk Oblast, Russia. Drawing: L.-M. Kara, after Okladnikov (1966)

by antlered animals, and these were joined on the cliffs above rivers by great aurochs, both horned and hornless. In short, within the pictorial record of South Siberia’s Neolithic and early Bronze Age, there was established an imagery that was both highly naturalistic and, in its earliest phase, female in gender. Irrespective of whether it is possible to claim that these magnificent images refer to supernatural beings or not, their gender and placement above the rivers strongly suggest that they were in some way adjudicators of human fate, which were associated with both female power and rivers’ flow. Within the Minusinsk Basin, there was a second pictorial tradition, probably contemporary with the first but the opposite of naturalistic. The most ancient examples of this tradition have been found on huge standing stones originally erected in the steppe region on the left bank of the Abakan River, a major tributary to the upper Yenisei. Often associated with an early Bronze Age culture known as Okunev and originally set within stone enclosures as if to center sacred space, these stones were carved with a great variety of motifs, many of them vaguely familiar or monstrous or mysterious.4 A typical example is a massive column, 280 × 90 cm3, from the Shira region (Fig. 3.3). Presumably, the stone had originally been located within a rectilinear frame and faced eastward, but, like so many of these monoliths, the Shira stone had been reset within a later burial context. The face of the stone is marked by a huge, horned, bovid mask. Below the mask are shaped two full breasts that are simultaneously the eyes of a great bear. An even taller monolith from Tazmin in the Ust-Abakan region is fronted by a mask that wavers between female and bovid; this is also horned.5 A fragmentary stone from Erbin, also in the Ust-Abakan region, is similarly fronted by

4

Kyzlasov (1986) and Jacobson-Tepfer (2015, pp. 42–62). Many of the great Minusinsk standing stones have been broken or lost in the ploughing of fields. Others have been removed to the museums in Minusinsk and Abakan, where they stand in contexts utterly at odds with their original locations. 5 Ibid., Fig. 2.14.

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Fig. 3.3 Broken monolith, two views. Eneolithic. From Lake Bilyë, Shira Region, Khakassia, Russia. Red sandstone, 280 × 90 cm. Drawing: L.-M. Kara, after Kyzlasov (1986)

a horned mask under which appear the distinct indications of female breasts (Fig. 3.4). These stones and the surviving others have a great variety of added elements, some suggesting celestial bodies or snakes, others monstrous, bear-like jaws. It is clear that on their carved shafts, the monoliths combined references to bovid and bear elements with both female generation and signs of destruction. The standing stones of the Minusinsk Basin were succeeded by flat, carved stele found primarily in burials of the same region.6 These stones are greatly complicated by the addition, over time, of more realistic elements, such as cattle, birds, strange syncretic beings, and even female imagery. This is not the place to untangle the cultural and chronological conundrums presented by both the standing stones and the stele, but the imagery as a whole points to a belief in a female force that is at once demonic and life-giving.7 The setting of these stones and stele in what were ancient 6

This may also indicate a secondary use in the process of which they were frequently broken and placed face down in the burial. The slabs were found in burials dated to the early Bronze Age. See Jacobson-Tepfer (2015, pp. 54–65). 7 Ibid., pp. 69–77.

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Fig. 3.4 Broken monolith with bovid mask and female breasts. Eneolithic. From a site near Erbin, Ust’-Abakan Region, Khakassia, Russia. Grey granite, 130 × 55 × 27 cm. Drawing: L.-M. Kara, after Kyzlasov (1986)

ritual sites and burials suggests that they and their pecked motifs were somehow associated with death and the afterworld and that their imagery was thus related to human fate. The clearest illustration of this complexity is found on a slab reused in a later Bronze Age burial within the cemetery of Razliv X within the Bograd region of Khakassia (Fig. 3.5). On one side of the slab is a monstrous head with bovid characteristics, ears, and horns; beneath this head appears a pattern than can be read as two breasts or two halves of an open-mouthed beast. By contrast, the other side of the slab is covered with engraved images of thin cattle. The succession of imagery descending from the strange beings on the standing stones and slabs from Khakassia is complicated and broken. From that northern location and early Bronze Age date, there is no clear tradition that we can follow down through the great rock art complexes of the Sayan and Altai mountains. What we do find, however, are flashes of that tradition, pictorial reconfigurations, and rearticulations, all tracing a trail of the movement of people and cultural descent during the Bronze Age from the upper basins of South Siberia’s rivers into the mountainous south. Within this route, fragmented by time and human destruction, it

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Fig. 3.5 Slab with large, masked image on one side, realistic images on the other. Early Bronze Age. From the cemetery of Razliv X, Bograd Region, Khakassia, Russia. Grey-green sandstone, 182 × 85 cm. Drawing: L.-M. Kara, after Pshenitsyna and Piatkin (2006)

is possible to identify several points at which the strange syncretic beings reemerged with a modified shape. Within the upper Yenisei basin and along the rivers now inundated by the construction of the Sayano-Shushenskoe reservoir, the Russian archaeologist Marianna Devlet identified and recorded hundreds of petroglyphs in the form of horned masks.8 With large noses and eyes and streamer-like horns and antennae, these masks recall the bovid character of those fronting the standing stones in 8 Devlet (1976, 1980). See Jacobson-Tepfer (2015, pp. 79–82). The Sayano-Shushenskoe reservoir was flooded beginning in the late 1970s. Here, and throughout this discussion, the term “mask”

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Khakassia. After their find site, they have been referred to as the Mugur-Sargol type. In this case, however, there are no surrounding elements and the masks are usually more benign in appearance than those on the great stones. Worn by the tides of the river, the masks have now largely disappeared under the reservoir’s waters. Highly similar masks appear in the northern-most complexes of Bayan-Ölgiy aimag in northwestern Mongolia. These certainly indicate that during the mid-Bronze Age, a population inhabiting the Yenisei basin had moved to the south, perhaps in search of better pasture, perhaps pushed by a more aggressive population. Mongolian examples include a single mask recorded on a boulder above Khar Yamaa Gol.9 Like the masks of Mugur-Sargol, this one has staring eyes, horns, and an appendage under the chin. A number of similar, perhaps even more archaic, masks appear along the banks of the Tsagaan Salaa and Baga Oigor rivers, in what is now understood as the Baga Oigor complex.10 Like the masks of the Yenisei region and those adorning the great stones in the Abakan steppe, these seem to refer to a spirit being rather than to the mask disguise of a shaman. Perhaps they are the faces of supernatural beings related to the rivers. Beyond the mask tradition that spread over South Siberia into northwestern Mongolia in the latter Bronze Age, there are related elements that have been found in burial contexts and on open-air rock art. These are all syncretic beings with many of the elements we have already seen. The most famous examples were pecked and painted on stone slabs used in the construction of five Bronze Age burials discovered in the small village of Karakol in the Altai Republic (Kubarev 1988). The slabs were decorated with layers of imagery, indicating that they had been used and reused several times before they were incorporated into the burials. Interestingly, the layers recapitulate the earlier history of imagery found along the rivers and in the steppes of South Siberia. The earliest layer includes realistic caprids and female moose, with the latter moving with the same powerful strides as the moose in the Angara and Tom river panels.11 How the panels with these pecked figures were originally used is not clear, but, at some point, they were turned and decorated with strange images executed in painting, pecking, and engraving. These figures include frontal figures with bull or antelope horns, feather headdresses, and faces reminiscent of the bovid types on the stones from Khakassia. Other figures are seen in profile, or as if striding to the right, with strange vertical headdresses, long loop heads, feathered headdresses, or even

refers to the image of a face and not necessarily to something that would be worn over the face as a disguise. 9 MAIC: RA_PETR_OI_0081. MAIC, the Mongolian Altai Inventory Collection (http// oregondigital.org/sets/maic) is an online collection of more than 2500 images supporting the website Archaeology and Landscape in the Altai Mountains of Mongolia (https://mongolianaltai. uoregon.edu) 10 See, especially, MAIC: RA_PETR_OI_0098, RA_PETR_OI_0466, RA_PETR_OI_0082, PETR_00342_OI. It is curious that the maskoids occur only in those river valleys, not further to the south or, at the least, they have not been so recorded. 11 Kubarev (1988, figs. 27, 48, and 51).

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Fig. 3.6 Images executed in painted and pecking techniques. Bronze Age. Slab from burial 5, Karakol, Altai Republic, Russia. Bronze Age. Drawing: L.-M. Kara, after Kubarev (1988)

animal heads. Some of the strange beings have arms that terminate in tail-like appendages or clawed hands (Fig. 3.6). Bird references also appear in frontal figures with feathered bodies. As in the case of the Mugur-Sargol masks, these strange Karakol images have frequently been identified as shamanic in character. Other than the existence of specific elements— horns, antlers, bird feathers, and a generally otherworldly appearance—there is nothing to support the presumption of a continuous line of belief between those ancient images and ethnographically observed shamanism. Taken together, this strange pantheon of images may be summarized under several principles. They are radically different from the striding moose, but they convey a distinctive vitality in their movement and in their presence. Several of the striding figures or figures with tall headdresses seem to be later cousins of images on the slabs in the Khakassian burials referred to above. Moreover, as in the case of those slabs, images include both those that are naturalistic (birds, cattle, female figures) and those that are strange combinations of bovid- and bear-like elements. For whatever reason, for the people who prepared the Karakol burials, both the realistic and the fantastic were parts of the same meaningful world, and both aspects of being were involved in consigning the dead to a spirit realm. They must have been associated with what was understood as the journey to the land of the dead. Going southeast from Karakol along the present-day Chuya highway, one comes to the confluence of the Chuya River and the Katun. About 18 km beyond this point and on the right bank of the Chuya is located the petroglyphic complex of KalbakTash, with its distinctive rocky ridge falling from the north down to the water’s edge. Kalbak-Tash is one of the best documented of all Russian Altai petroglyphic complexes and is also one of the oldest and culturally most complicated (Kubarev and Jacobson 1996). Like the images from Karakol, these from Kalbak-Tash refer

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Fig. 3.7 Bird-woman with raised arms and feathered body. Early Bronze Age. Kalbak-Tash, Altai Republic, Russia. Drawing: L.-M. Kara, after Kubarev and Jacobson (1996)

back to the more northern traditions and seem to anticipate those that will appear in the Baga Oigor complex. At the same time, they remind us that we are seeing only scattered traces of what once were certainly more clearly and continuously articulated beliefs relating to animal adjudicators of the human fate. Large images of both male and female elk, as well as massive aurochs and ibex, cover many of the panels at Kalbak-Tash. They are no less naturalistic than the moose imagery from the Tom’ and Angara panels, but the Kalbak-Tash figures are stationary and executed in the profile, contoured manner that in this part of North Asia denotes an archaic period.12 In some places, these animals are alone or juxtaposed with naturalistic caprids. In other panels, they are deeply interwoven with images that refer to another realm. These include frontal skeletal figures, birthing women, frontal dancing stick figures, and strange grate-like elements. The most remarkable of all the Kalbak-Tash images are a large number of what may be described as bird-women (Fig. 3.7).13 These are frontal figures of considerable size with raised, claw-like hands, small heads frequently of a bird-like aspect, upper bodies often of a skeletal appearance, and lower bodies framed like the spread tails of an avian raptor. Although details of these bird-women vary from one image to another, most have a clearly defined pubis and a skeletal chest. In several cases, one or more ithyphallic figures bracket the bird12 Regarding the cultural significance of image execution in contours or silhouette, see JacobsonTepfer (2019, pp. 123–146). 13 Jacobson-Tepfer (2015, pp. 91–100).

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women but without any further interaction. In their rigid frontality, repetition, and overlay, these images suggest a visual incantation. While the damage done to the panels makes it almost impossible to sort out cultural layers,14 it appears that at times the bird-women are overlaid by the large, naturalistic cervids,15 but, at other times, this sequence is not clear. It is certain, however, that the large, naturalistic animals, the grate-like figures, and the bird-women, were executed in a period much earlier than the classic Bronze Age images of hunters, caravans, vehicles, and racing animals found, also, at Kalbak-Tash. Given the vivid aspect of the Kalbak-Tash bird-women, their number across the complex, and their size, one would assume that it would be possible to find similar images at other sites and from the same early Bronze Age. This is not, however, the case. There is one figure from Baga Oigor that recalls but is not the same as the Kalbak-Tash women (Jacobson et al. (2001), Vol. II, pl. 268). Closer in type but much further distant in space are a number of images from Chuluut Gol in northcentral Mongolia (Novgorodova (1989), pp. 89–98). These figures are also frontal with raised claw-like hands and bird-like heads; their upper bodies are either skeletal or linear and include the indication of breasts. The base of the figures takes the form of a raptor’s broad tail (Jacobson-Tepfer (2015), Fig. 3.15).16 Perhaps there are additional examples of the bird-women at other unidentified and unrecorded sites. Given the vast size of this region, however, and the relative lack of documentation of its rock art, the Kalbak-Tash and Chulutyn-Gol images, datable to the Bronze Age, remain the clearest indication of some kind of a spirit associated with the concept of regeneration and understood as part bird, part human. By placement and orientation, they are also clearly associated with the river’s flow. There is, however, a cluster of images from the Baga Oigor complex that appear to express aspects of all the syncretic beings discussed so far: those from the Abakan steppe, the upper Yenisei basin, Kalbak-Tash, and Chulutyn Gol. The Baga Oigor material can be divided into several types, the oldest of which is a frontal figure, horned but faceless, and with a body sometimes in the form of wings, or bell-shaped, and often given legs and feet. Several of these images combine the bell-shaped outer shell with an anthropomorphic body. Most striking, however, is that these mute, static figures are frequently associated with female animals or with the signs of childbearing or birthing (Jacobson-Tepfer (2015), pp. 102–111). For example, beside a barely visible image in Tsagaan Salaa III, oriented toward the south are more obscure images of a female elk and horse (?), seemingly approaching the spirit figure from its right (MAIC: RA_PETR_OI_0088). Close by and on a rock face 14

The damage at Kalbak-Tash derives from several causes. There is the basic wear of time and the elements, but it is also true that previous researchers and over-eager amateurs have rubbed and scraped the surfaces so as to remove lichen. As a result, whole sections of the sandstone surface have fallen away and distinctions in coloration that would clarify sequence are lost. 15 The term “cervid” (or cervidae) refers to many herbivorous species characterized by ruminant habits and by antlers. Cervids include, among others, moose, elk, reindeer, and common deer. 16 Unfortunately, no other studies of Chulutyn Gol have confirmed Novgorodova’s drawn record. See Okladnikov (1981).

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Fig. 3.8 Birthing spirit figure approached by animals. Bronze Age. TS V, Baga Oigor complex. Photograph: Gary Tepfer

oriented to the Tsagaan Salaa below, a spirit figure with large horns, a bell-shaped body, and feet stands over a fine aurochs and a female elk. Despite the muscular appearance of the aurochs, the animal is represented as if female and pregnant with young (MAIC: PETR_00077_OI). The most explicit expression of the spirit figure as a birthing figure is found in TS V on a rock face rising over the confluence of the Tsagaan Salaa and Baga Oigor and facing south toward the snow-crested Taldagiin Ikh Uul. This figure combines a frontal anthropomorphic body with a surrounding bell shape. Like the others, this one is horned and faceless, but it is clearly birthing an infant and, from its right, approaches several horned animals (Fig. 3.8). There are several other spirit figures in the Baga Oigor complex, all of which are variations on what has just been described. The images are always oriented either to the rivers or to the south or east. On some occasions, they appear to signal a passage way through the stone (Jacobson-Tepfer (2015), fig. 3.24) or into the earth (ibid., fig. 3.23), as if they were liminal beings on the threshold between the realms of existence. Unfortunately, with time, these bell-shaped figures also seem to have disappeared into a muted, disrupted archaeology. We recorded a crude, similar figure on a rock wall within the valley of Khargantyn Gol. Similar figures appear on slabs used to fill a ritual site south of the Baga Oigor complex, but, in that case, the slabs are broken and their original location is uncertain (Kovalev (2015)). Other than these, no similar examples of such spirit figures have yet been recorded or published.

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However, one refers to these figures from Baga Oigor, which have the wing-like shape of a bird and the horns of an aurochs. They are frequently associated with elk, ibex, or aurochs, all seemingly female in character. Related to these images are several others, also found in the Baga Oigor complex. On a red stone in TS II has been pecked a frontal figure with large ibex horns, ears, and wing-like elements (MAIC: PETR_00069_OI). The crude pecking and darkened patina suggest a date no later than the beginning of the Bronze Age. On a large boulder close by, several images have been deeply gouged from the surface. They include a large elk, an aurochs, and a frontal bird-like figure (Jacobson et al. (2001), Vol. II, pls. 68 and 69). Here, again, the size and naturalism of the large animals and the manner of their execution and that of the bird-man argue for an extremely early date in the Bronze Age. The bird-man is a curious but significant element. We have not recorded any examples of this type in other rock art complexes, but it does appear at the Baga Oigor sites in later Bronze Age compositions, and there quite vividly, as if it were a well-known, signifying element. In a series of panels on a high site in Baga Oigor III, several bird-men are shown leading horses. In two of the compositions, crouched figures, presumably representing the dead, appear in square enclosures. Beside or within the enclosures stand frontal females; by their positions, they can be identified as guardians at the threshold between life and death (Jacobson-Tepfer (2015), pp. 211–218 and Jacobson-Tepfer (2019), pp. 245–249). A fourth panel represents the scene of a hunter and his prey—in this case, a number of aurochs. Two bird-men and a pair of horses appear at the upper margin of the scene, whereas beside the hunter stands, most curiously, another frontal female figure. This set of images reveals, I believe, the persistence of several mythic elements down into the late Bronze Age. The female element (now a recognizable human figure) must be the mistress of the mountain who releases animals to the hunter and replenishes them, the bird element should be associated with the passage (through the horses) from death back to life, and the aurochs should be as one of the two animals (with the elk) also associated with the liminal boundary between this world and the next. More than any other North Asian rock art complex yet identified, Baga Oigor is extraordinarily rich in fragmentary reflections of traditions intimating ancient belief systems. Deeply rooted in earlier North Asian traditions, the images found in that complex point to a series of supernatural beings in which specific associations shift and recombine in persistently significant ways. These references in effect describe what may be called signifying structures. By this, I refer to the way in which not the parts but rather the specific interrelationships of those parts point to particular meanings. In other words, significance is embedded within a dynamic ecology of belief.17 Thus, a single female moose may simply be that, an image of the animal. Set among many other such images, over a river, it joins female and river and thereby becomes a signifier of both generation and transformation. The great stones from Khakassia are all different in their decoration, just as are the slightly later slabs from

17

This concept is more fully developed in Jacobson (1993).

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the same region. It would be impossible to say that the stones or slabs have one particular meaning, i.e., they represent one particular supernatural being. Rather, the combination of horns, bovine faces, breasts, full bellies, and monstrous animals around masks, which in their original settings faced persistently to the east, conjure a space and a process wherein is adjudicated human fate. This space is in some manner associated with generation, death, and transformation. The bird-women from Kalbak-Tash and the spirit figures from Baga Oigor are more uniform in their characteristics, but, here, again, in their frontality and facelessness, they refer to a space of power where forces of generation and transformation converge. In reading these strange images, I necessarily draw on the indications of late Bronze and early Iron Age imagery where signifying structures are much clearer. This process of “reading back” from later to earlier signs cannot be detailed here, but it is more fully explained elsewhere (Jacobson 1993; Jacobson-Tepfer 2015). Suffice to say here that in the early Bronze Age, the signifying process I have just described emerged within hieratic images—images absolute in their expression—lacking any psychological interaction with any other figures. By the late Bronze Age, this expression had become embedded in narrative compositions such as those from BO III. In those panels, the combination of elements tell stories that enclose a dynamic meaning. The juxtaposition of bird-men and horses refers, I would argue, to the sacrifice of the animal in order to transport the soul of the dead to the next world. The figures within enclosures refer to the interment of the dead, and the woman standing by or within the enclosure is the guardian of the road to the lands of the dead. At an earlier time, this narrative would have been conveyed by a figure such as a bird-woman, or a horned mask, or a moth-shaped spirit figure overlooking the flow of a river. By the late Bronze Age, this single center of power fractured into many pieces, thus reflecting a process that shaped human fate. There are several other large panels from Baga Oigor that reflect the transformation of that symbolizing system from hieratic images into narrative compositions. Here, I will discuss only two; their significance will eventually become clearer. On a high terrace in BO I stands a large boulder, its glacier-scraped, south-facing surface covered with a net of images (Fig. 3.9). Hunters take aim at elk and aurochs, with each group seemingly within its own separate space as if the whole were taking place on a mountainside. Wild caprids leap across space, and dogs attack large bulls. At the base of the composition a man leads a loaded yak—a clear sign of a household—whereas to the right of that group stands a small, graceful elk, whose antlers rise and grow across the surface of the boulder, creating a labyrinthine path within a mountain and along which appear the hunting scenes. From the head of the elk thus grows the significant world, one of life and abundance. There is one unsettling element, however: at the top of the boulder, partially bleached out, stands a giant figure with what seems to be a sword slung

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Fig. 3.9 Boulder with scenes of hunting, a family caravan, and a stag antler that becomes a mountain trail. Late Bronze Age. BO I, Baga Oigor complex. Photograph: Gary Tepfer

across his body. This giant figure adds a note of menace to what is otherwise an idyll of abundance.18 Here, the signifying elements include the variety of animals, the hunters, the elk with antlers that describe a mountainous trail, the household scene, and the giant, but their interconnections form a structure of dynamic meaning, one reflecting the generation of the world (the stag and the antler), well-being (the loaded yak, the abundant wild animals), transformation (the hunt: life and afterlife), and a force menacing this whole process (the giant). The composition as a whole forms a narrative in which is firmly embedded the adjudication of human fate by animals. The second large panel is on a huge boulder at the back of a terrace in BO II. The terrace appears to have been extensively used for rituals over several millennia, and the boulder has been curiously marked by hundreds of small blows as if in ritual incantations (Jacobson-Tepfer (2019), pp. 266–288).19 Across the south face of the boulder are arrayed the images of wild goats, elk, dogs, and hunters, creating a virtual mountainside within which occur several hunts. On the upper surface,

The figure of the giant remains perplexing, but it occurs frequently in the rock art of the late Bronze Age. See the panel of an aurochs hunt from BO III, as discussed above. For other panels with giants, search MAIC: giants. See also Sovetova (2005). In this complex, as elsewhere, the upper surfaces of boulders are frequently bleached, probably from the urine of millennia of rodents sitting there and catching the sun. 19 MAIC: PETR_00388_OI, RA_PETR_OI_0279, RA_PETR_OI_0278. 18

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however, is the outline of a dwelling, complete with an entrance and hearth, and on the upper left is a group of six large elk, both antlered and antlerless. Beside them, in turn, are three frontal women in birthing positions, thus allowing us to dub the boulder as birthing women rock. This panel is less skillfully executed than that from BO I, but it is certainly from the same late Bronze Age. By inference, the birthing women rock describes a process within which human fate is held in balance. The wild animals reflect the abundance of the natural world, the dwelling may refer to human well-being, the hunters are effectively the instruments of transformation, and the birthing women in association with the deer must refer to the replenishment of the wild world. The Ice Age aurochs referred to at the beginning of this discussion (Fig. 3.1) presents the central challenge of trying to read into the imagery of the deep past beings with the power to shape the lives of humans and their animals. Whether one calls such beings supernatural gamekeepers, or adjudicators of human fate, or masters/mistresses of the animals, we can only identify them in prehistory by certain visual signs or by representations of their actions, but, at all times, our identification remains uncertain. It is not sufficient to claim that an animal or an anthropomorph is a spirit or a shaman simply because that is what we would prefer to find in the ancient record. The problems of image interpretation are exacerbated by the fact that populations appear to have crisscrossed the Altai and Sayan uplands over thousands of years and moved seasonally between the lower basins and higher pastures. They left their imagery on cliffs and boulders so that we can almost trace their movements through space and across the Bronze and early Iron Ages, but they left no written records of their cosmogenic myths, and, until the late Bronze Age, we do not even know how to name these people, except as archaeological cultures. North Asia is the region that introduced the outside world to a specific Siberian shamanism that became particularly compelling to Western observers (Eliade 1972; Znamenski 2003; Dragos et al. 2017). One aspect of the ensuing fascination with primitive beliefs has been a tendency to turn to the concept of shamanism for the interpretation of North Asian rock art (e.g., Rozwadowski 2012). This is not to be wondered at: supernatural gamekeepers perceived to have animal forms or animal powers have traditionally been associated with shamanic practices, in which the shaman is credited with the power to mediate between the living and the dead, to assuage the dead, and to conduct the dead to the other world. In these roles, the shaman—male or female—is invariably assisted by an animal other, most often a stag represented by the shaman’s antlered crown, or a bird such as a raven, an eagle, or an owl represented by feathers or iron claws, or one of a variety of waterfowl (Anuchin 1914). These animal signs are understood to confer on the shaman the power needed to penetrate the underworld or to fend off the attacks of black shamans or evil spirits intent on thwarting the shaman’s journey. Traditionally, one of the most important objects associated with the shaman was the drum, understood as the shaman’s steed and conceived as a deer or a horse. The many materials preserved in Russian museum collections make it clear that a shaman was dependent on his or her animal others and would even be transformed into those others in certain parts of the shamanic ceremony (kamlenie).

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Many scholars have argued that the strange images from Khakassia, MugurSargol, Kalbak-Tash, Karakol, and Baga Oigor all reflect shamanic traditions, i.e., they are, in effect, prehistoric images of shamans (Kubarev 2002; Devlet and Devlet 2002; Rozwadowski 2014). When drawing this conclusion, they assume that symbolic elements—such as horns or antlers—surrounding shamans and shamanism in the ethnographic period must directly reflect a primordial model, one dating well back into prehistory. However, this assumption ignores the extreme malleability of beliefs and rituals: the fact that the nature of these traditions necessarily responds to constantly changing social and environmental conditions. It also ignores the uncertain identity between what we know of shamanic materials today and the details of prehistoric imagery as preserved in rock art. Thus, a staff may as easily be the staff of a herder as of a shaman (Kubarev 2002), and, while a horned headdress may refer to a being half animal-half human, it may also refer to a hunter wearing the head of a fox or a wolf as a disguise.20 As a cultural phenomenon, shamanism is much more likely to have gradually emerged from competing centers of power: personal, familial, clan, and, ultimately, state. Within each ethnic version of shamanism, these centers of power will be different and, in many cases, would have coexisted. Thus, drawing a clear path between what we call shamanism today and the materials of prehistoric archaeology is futile. Following Carolyn Humphrey, we should consider shamanism as a “discourse. . .constitutive of social realities in contexts of power. . .” (Humphrey 1996, pp. 192–193). The early stones of the Minusinsk Basin and the masks and strange images of the upper Yenisei, Karakol, Kalbak-Tash, and Baga Oigor may all reflect the seeds of later shamanic concerns for animal origins and animal helpers, but there are insufficient bases to claim that they are images of shamans per se. Nonetheless, within the complex of animal references associated with North Asian shamans, there are several that may be useful in considering the significance of the strange prehistoric images from rock art and standing stones. These affirm a dependency on animal and female sources of power. For example, among the Tofa of the eastern Sayan and the Ostyak (Ket) of the middle Yenisei, the accouterments of the shaman’s dress—breast cover, gown, crown, and boots—are dominated by references to reindeer and birds (Dioszegi 1968; Anuchin 1914). Among some Siberian groups, the shaman’s deer or bearskin robe was made by women or ornamented with the signs of specifically a female being, such as the vulva and breasts (e.g., Dioszegi (1968), Figs. 51 and 71). An even more significant indicator of that female and animal power lies in the shaman’s drum, an instrument made of elk or deer hide stretched tightly over a rounded frame and held by inner crosspieces. As the shamans beat their drums and recounted the journey taken during the kamlenie, they would raise and lower the drum as if to evoke the animal’s breathing as it carried the shaman into another world, and they would sing to it as if to

20

This is a practice that my husband and I frequently recorded among the herders of the Mongolian Altai. They believe that the sight and possibly the smell of the predator skin confuse and distract their prey.

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encourage their steed on its journey (Vajnstejn 1968). Perhaps the most striking aspect of the traditional drum were the bumps around the external rim of the instrument: they were understood to be the tits of the drum steed, the means by which the shaman would be sustained on her or his long and dangerous journey to the underworld (Potapov (1935), p. 141; Anuchin (1914), fig. 40; Dioszegi (1968), figs. 6 and 7). Made from the wood of a tree growing on the clan lands, the drum joined this shamanic element to a more ancient mountain cult, just as the bearskin joined the shaman to a prehistoric bear cult (Alekseenko 1968). Overall, the most important animal in this complex of animal helpers is the antlered cervid: a reindeer, perhaps, or an elk (Potapov 1935, 1968; Dioszegi 1968). In fact, between North Asian shamanism as known through ethnographic data, on the one hand, and the rock art of prehistory, on the other, there is no clear path. Despite the arguments of some scholars (e.g., Rozwadowski 2001; Devlet and Devlet 2002), there is no certain pictorial evidence to support the assertion of shamanic traditions earlier than the Iron Age. There are no figures that could be recognized on the basis of ethnographic data as shamans, and there are no representations of anything identifiable as a drum.21 On the other hand, if we look at archaic cults and myths from South Siberia—those associated with peoples who probably shared ancestry with the Bronze Age inhabitants of the forest steppe and mountain steppe of South Siberia and northwestern Mongolia—we find significant and clarifying traces of supernatural beings and animal helpers. Of course, there will not be any direct correspondences between ethnographic documentation and ancient imagery, but it may be possible to find certain signs that indicate a genetic link. The two main ethnicities from which I draw ethnographic materials are the Ket and the Evenks. The Ket are an almost disappeared people, with their fragmentary population living today along the middle Yenisei River and its tributaries. They depend on fishing and hunting, and their use of reindeer for draft and riding have been relatively recent (Alekseyenko 1969). There is considerable evidence that the Ket originated further to the south, within a broad region, including the Altai–Sayan uplifts (Dul’zon 1962; Pulleyblank 1983). Their movement to the north, up the Yenisei corridor, was probably catalyzed in the late first millennium BCE by the aggressive expansion of the Xiongnu out of Central Mongolia (Vadja 2001, xii–xiv). The second group are the Evenks, a relatively numerous Tungusic people now scattered within forested Siberia and down into Mongolia and China. The Evenks were traditionally dependent on hunting, fishing, and reindeer husbandry. Their early home is believed to have been within the taiga and taiga-steppe west of Lake Baikal, including the Altai region (Zabiyako et al. 2017). Like the Ket, they were forced out of that homeland by the aggressive expansion of the Xiongnu and other peoples, but, in the early modern period, they were particularly impacted first by Russian expansion into the Baikal region and then by the imposition of Soviet rule. Like the Ket, the Evenks preserve in their practices, cults, and myths, elements that

21

Those representations of drums that do exist and have been referred to by Kubarev (2002) and Devlet and Devlet (2002) are all from the ethnographic period.

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suggest the depth and meaning of several motifs found in the prehistoric rock art of the northern Altai. The most important pre-shamanic cults are possibly those of the bear, the mountain, and the threshold; here, we will consider only that of the mountain.22 During the ethnographic period, this cult was pervasive throughout the mountainous regions of North Asia (Jacobson-Tepfer 2015, pp. 323–324).23 Within the data gathered by early explorers and later ethnographers of Siberia, there is regular reference to the mountain understood as the source of a lineage. It becomes easier to understand the existence of a mountain cult when one remembers that within South Siberia and northern Mongolia, the uplands offered the greatest source of wild animals and also the finest pastures and, hence, the importance of a specific mountain for the survival of a specific lineage or tribe. Even now, in northwestern Mongolia, there are several mountains considered sacred (khairkhan).24 The cult even emerges in the shamanic ritual: according to Potapov (1958) and others, within the Sayan–Altai region, the shaman’s drum had to have been made from a larch cut from the lineage’s sacred mountain. Within the ethnographic record of South Siberia, the archaic cult of the mountain involved a female figure, the mistress of the mountain. She was said to have appeared to the hunter the night before his hunt; by sleeping with him, she assured the replenishment of animals taken by the hunter.25 Within Khakassia, the region just to the north of Tuvy, mountain caves were considered to be the source of a lineage. Kyzlasov believes that the caves were thus understood as generative and protective: the locus of the female mountain spirit (Kyzlasov 1982). Obviously, a mountain is not a living being, so it cannot function as an animal helper; but the functions of supernatural adjudicators of human fate were embedded within the mountain, its forests, and its caves. Pictorial elements explicitly referring to a natural landscape—e.g., trees, slopes, and rivers—are almost totally lacking pre-Iron Age rock art,26 so it is natural to ask how a mountain cult could be indicated in that tradition. In fact, there are constant reverberations of a mountain cult within 22 A study of the cults of the bear, the mountain, and the metaphoric threshold as indicated in ancient rock art is in preparation. 23 The primary sources on the mountain cult of North Asia include Potapov (1946, 1958), D’yakonova (1975), and I.L. Kyzlasov (1982). 24 Indeed, throughout the Altai and Sayan region, the sacral aspect of the land is clearly indicated by cult sites marked by stone mounds (ovoo) along mountain ridges, at passes, and at critical overlooks. In the case of the sacred mountain, Shiveet Khairkhan, centering the upper Tsagaan Gol, Bronze and Iron Age ritual and burial monuments around its base and the appearance of elaborate ovoo on its ridges point to a cult of this mountain going back to the Bronze Age (Jacobson-Tepfer and Meacham 2016). 25 According to Potapov, the female form of this figure was in more modern times displaced by a male master of the mountain and the cult itself was absorbed into shamanic and Lamaistic traditions (Potapov 1946, p. 159). 26 Exceptions to this statement include the representation of trails along which run small animals, arranged in a meandering manner over a stone surface. There are also a few indicators of rivers, but these are rare. Water is more often indicated by the image of a fish.

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the rock art of the Altai Mountains and the western Sayan. The mountains take the form of large boulders literally covered with the signs of a rich natural world: animals dashing in all directions, birds flying overhead, and, within these indications of animal abundance, small hunters (Jacobson-Tepfer (2019), pl. VIII.29; MAIC: PETR_00363_OI). One boulder in TS I is covered with racing animals that gracefully evoke the vitality of the natural world (Jacobson et al. (2001): Vol. II, pls. 96 and 97). A small, elegantly pecked boulder in Tsagaan Gol is literally enveloped with racing wild ibex and argali, their flight spurred on by several hunters (JacobsonTepfer (2019), pls. VI.5–VI.7). A large, darkened boulder in BO I is covered with the signs of a hunter’s paradise, in the center of which are two small hunters (ibid., pl. VIII.10). A triangular boulder in BO III is covered with the pecked images of spread-winged birds, wild goats, horses, and a family caravan (ibid., pls. IX.22– IX.26). This is one of the finest of all the Bronze Age “mountains,” but the most vivid indicator of a mountain cult appears in the form of the large boulder with the “antler landscape” in BO I, as discussed above (Fig. 2.9). Two other tropes in the Bronze Age rock art of the Tsagaan Gol and Baga Oigor complexes echo ethnographic indicators of a mountain cult. One is represented by a female figure standing quietly beside a hunter. Her unexpected presence at the scene of a hunt and in a mountain landscape is reminiscent of the motif of the mistress of the mountain, she who gives to the hunter his bounty and then replaces it (JacobsonTepfer (2015), figs. 4.18 and 6.16). A variation on this theme is visible in a large panel in BO III (MAIC: RA_PETR_OI_0298, RA_PETR_OI_0299). On this surface, a man is leading a group of cattle, some loaded with family belongings, and wild animals. In front of him stands a large female figure, apparently naked. In this case, it seems as if the female figure represents or grants the bounty of the mountain to the family caravan. The second and related trope joins a hunting scene with two copulating figures: the hunter, perhaps, with the mistress of the mountain who will renew the animals taken in the hunt (e.g., Jacobson-Tepfer (2015), figs. 4.23, 4.24, and 5.16).27 After shamanism and cults, a third source for untangling the meanings in prehistoric rock art derives from mythic traditions recreated in ethnographic reports of the last 200 years. Here, again, the myths of the Ket and Evenk origin are the most relevant, primarily because the Ket and Evenks are most likely to have inhabited the region of the northern Altai and South Siberia in the Bronze Age. Within the tales associated with these ethnicities, there are two mythic traditions of particular interest. The personages inhabiting the Ket mythic universe describe the evolution of primary deities over a period of hundreds or even thousands of years.28 These deities included the highest god, Es, who seems to have acquired the characteristics of a

27

See another version of this motif in a panel in BO III (MAIC: RA_PETR_OI_0302, RA_PETR_OI_0303). 28 For a fuller discussion of this mythic tradition and the sources from which it was derived, see Jacobson-Tepfer (2015, pp. 330–334).

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Western high deity: male, otiose, and associated with heaven, the sun, storm clouds, and thunder. His alter ego was Kales, the embodiment of evil. These two figures are most certainly reconfigurations of more ancient deities as a result of the impact of Christianity. Below them was the duality of Tomam and Khosedam. The first was associated with the south, with warmth, and with the return of birds (that is, of life) to the north. The second, Khosedam, represented death and destruction through her association with the treacherous rapids of the Yenisei River and with the north. Khosedam’s bird was the grebe, associated with the upper and lower depths of the river. Her animal was the reindeer, the hoof prints of which marked her movements over the snow. Below these two female deities were two heroic figures, Alba and Dokh, part human, part shaman. In fact, there are many indications that the layers of the Ket mythic universe were originally different: Khosedam ruled at the top until she was expelled from heaven by the ascendance of Es. Within this universe, the Khosedam/Tomam duality is of particular interest. Khosedam represented both death and destruction but she was also understood as the source of life, the necessary transition from death back to life. Her regular, raging journey to the north, down the Yenisei, recapitulated the journey of a human’s existence, and the river was the metaphor of that journey. Khosedam was both human and animal; her bird, the grebe, reaffirmed her liminal existence between death and life. In every respect, Khosedam recalls the animal/human duality of the Minusinsk monolithic stones and stele. In her bird/human duality and her association with death and the river, she calls to mind the bird-women of Kalbak-Tash and the spirit figures of Baga Oigor. She may also be reflected in the duality of the female guarding the road to the land of the dead and in the female figures, bird-men, and horses, represented most vividly in the panels from BO III (Jacobson-Tepfer (2015), pp. 211–218). Of course, there is no one-to-one relationship between the Ket mythic deities and what we see in the rock art of South Siberia and northern Mongolia. Just as the pictorial tradition seems to have shifted over thousands of years, reconfiguring ancient beliefs, so have the figures of the Ket mythic universe recapitulated the meandering changes of an archaic tradition. It is possible that Khosedam/Tomam was originally one figure representing both life and death, Es and Kales were fashioned in the wake of the Russian Orthodoxy imposed on Siberian peoples by Imperial Russia, and Alba and Dokh emerged as necessary agents within shamanic societies. Over millennia, the essential elements of a female association with generation and death, with birds and cervids, and with the river as the road to the land of the dead became rearranged in both image and myth, pointing always to a female adjudicator of human fate. Among the Evenks living along the tributaries of the Yenisei River, as among related Tungusic peoples across Siberia, mythic elements are deeply entwined with

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shamanic traditions.29 The Evenk concept of mythic space is complex and multilayered (Zabiyako et al. 2017) and centers on the sacred clan lands, the place from which the clan’s ancestors emerged. The source was a being understood as the mother of the clan but also of the world and all its living creatures. In some versions of the Evenk myth, this clan mother is conceived as a woman, but, in others, she takes the form of a cow moose or a reindeer. In her human form, she is the being called on to return animals and fish to the Evenk world; as the Animal-Mother, she is the very source of the animals on which the Evenks depend (Zabiyako et al. 2017, p. 140). Within the Evenk shamanic traditions, the Animal-Mother was understood to dwell under a rock or under the roots of the sacred clan tree from which was fashioned the frame of the shaman’s drum. The sacred tree was thus conceived as the source of the clan, of the animals on which it depended, and as the passage to both the upper and lower worlds. In another version of the tradition, the AnimalMother was understood as living in a reindeer skin tent and the spirit ancestors were understood as birds perched on the branches of the antler tree (Anisimov 1963, p. 183). Among some Siberian Tungusic peoples, the mistress of the road to the land of the dead was a woman, from whom the shaman had to obtain permission to transport the dead along the river to the land of the dead (Anisimov 1958, p. 78). Within other traditions, the generative source of animals and humans was located on a hill or in a swamp where the shaman would encounter a naked woman covered with the hair of a deer and wearing antlers (Anisimov 1963, p. 186). This persistent cluster of references—female, cervid, antlers, tree, death, new life—is beautifully referenced in a pair of gold plaques now housed in the Siberian Treasure of Peter the Great in the Hermitage State Museum, St. Petersburg (Fig. 3.10). Although the find site of these plaques is unknown, their authenticity is affirmed by a great felt carpet found in Pazyryk 5 (Jacobson-Tepfer (2015), Fig. 1.1) and by a number of similar objects recovered from other burials (Jacobson 1993, pp. 75–87). In all these sources are repeated the basic motifs of trees, animals, predation, and new life or those of horseman, woman, and tree. In the gold plaques, a seated male figure holds the leads of two saddled horses while on his lap rests the legs of his companion, either dead or dying. This figure’s head lies on the lap of a large woman, and above them grows a richly leaved tree. The woman’s association with the tree is indicated by the way in which a band from her headdress is woven into the tree’s branches, whereas the dead man’s association with death and the tree is indicated by his gorytus (quiver), now hung on the tree’s trunk. Here, as in the several panels from BO III, the horses represent animals that will carry the dead to the next world. It is impossible not to see in the cluster of associations within the Evenk myths a reflection of the antler landscape from BO I (Fig. 3.9). Within that Bronze Age panel

29

The most important ethnographers of the Evenki and more generally of the Tungusic peoples include G.I. Varlamova, G.M. Vasilevich, A.F. Anisimov, and, more recently, A.P. Zabiyako and colleagues.

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Fig. 3.10 Anecdotal plaque, one of a pair, with female figure, male riders and their horses, and tree. Late Bronze or Early Iron Age. Gold, length approximately 16.2 cm. Siberian Treasure of Peter the Great, Hermitage State Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. Drawing: L.-M. Kara

are found the affirmation of the cervid and its antlers as the center of a wild landscape probably referring to the clan lands. In both cases and in the several other rock art versions of the antler landscape, the central elements are a mountain-like landscape abundant in game and an antlered cervid as the source of that mountain. The conception underlying all these and related representations is that death is a doorway to renewed life and that the adjudicator of human fate—the one who guards the door to the land of the dead and thus offers renewed life—is female. She began as an animal, but, by the late Bronze Age, her animal form had been replaced by that of a woman, such as the one we see reflected in the gold plaques from the Siberian Treasure and in the carpet from Pazyryk 5. Siberian myths, cults, and shamanism return us to the original problem of the identification of supernatural beings or adjudicators of human fate within a prehistoric context. North Asian rock art from that period is overwhelmingly naturalistic in pictorial reference, seeming to refer to the real world of humans and animals. As we have seen, however, there are scattered indications of another realm, one centered on beings that are at first part human, part animal and later human in form but more than human in power. The nature of the animal shifted from one species to another: from

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moose, to reindeer, to elk, and to aurochs and ibex, but, despite their antlers and horns, these were all female in essence.30 Surviving rock-pecked panels indicate that the desire for hunting success must have been central to the invocation of these supernatural powers. These panels also reaffirm, as do the great standing stones of the Minusinsk Basin, that success in the hunt was inextricably bound to the liminal space between life, death, and the return to life. Stones and stone panels situate the process of the generation of life firmly within the sacred mountain or the clan lands. Although the pictorial evidence for these understandings appears unevenly across space and episodically in time, it is clear that within prehistoric South Siberia and mountainous northern Mongolia, the barriers between human and animal existence seem to have been understood as porous and malleable as well as essential and generative. The strange images from Khakassia, Mugur-Sargol, Kalbak-Tash, Karakol, and Baga Oigor do not reflect shamans and shamanism but rather the realm of beings who functioned as animal helpers or adjudicators of human fate.

References Alekseenko, E.A. 1968. The Cult of the Bear among the Ket (Yenisei Ostyaks), pp. 175–192, in Dioszegi, V., ed. Popular Beliefs and Folklore Tradition in Siberia. The Hague: Mouton & Co., and Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University. Alekseyenko, Y., A. 1969. Olenovodstvo u ketov. In Ketskiy sbornik: mifologiya, etnografiya, teksty, 113–125. Moscow: Nauka. Anisimov, A.F. 1958. Religiya evenkov v istoriko-genetecheskom isuchenii i problemy proiskhozhdeniya pervobytnykh verovaniy. Moscow–Leningrad: Akademii Nauk, SSSR. ———. 1963. Cosmological Concepts of the People of the North. In Studies in Siberian Shamanism, ed. H.N. Michael, 157–229. Toronto: Arctic Institute of the North, University of Toronto. Anuchin V. I. 1914. Shamanstva u yeniseyskikh Ostyakov. Sbornik Muzeya Antropologii i Enograpfii, Vol. II (2). St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences. D’yakonova, V.P. 1975. Kultovyye sooruzheniya tuvintsev. In Polyvye issledovaniya institute Etnografii 1974 g, 157–164. Moscow: Nauka. Devlet, M. 1976. Petroglify Ulug-Khema. Moscow: Nauka. ———. 1980. Petroglify Mugur-Sargola. Moscow: Nauka. Devlet, Ekaterina, and Marianna Devlet. 2002. Siberian Shamanistic Rock Art. In Spirits and Stones: Shamanism and Rock Art in Central Asia and Siberia, ed. A. Rozwadowski and M.M. Kosko, 120–136. Instytut Wschodni UAM: Poznan. Dioszegi, V. 1968. The Problem of the Ethnic Homogeneity of Tofa (Karagas) Shamanism, pp. 239–330, in Dioszegi, V., ed. Popular Beliefs and Folklore Tradition in Siberia. The Hague: Mouton & Co., and Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University. Dragos, Gheorghiu, Emilia Pasztor, Herman Bender, and George Nash. 2017. Mind-Body, Nature, and Culture. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Dul’zon, A.P. 1962. Byloye rasseleniye ketov po dannym toponimiki. Voprosy geografii 58: 50–80.

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The determination of the gender of animals within prehistoric rock art is complicated by the fact that the male and female reindeer, the ibex, and most certainly the female aurochs all carried antlers or horns. Nonetheless, over time, the rack of the female reindeer became represented as much larger than it would have been in nature, and the moose and elk were given masculine powers by the addition of large racks. See Jacobson (1993).

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Eliade, Mircea. 1972. Shamanism. Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated by Willard R. Trask. Bollingen Series. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Humphrey, Caroline. 1996. Shamanic Practices and the State in Northern Asia: Views from the Center and Periphery. In Shamanism, History, and the State, ed. Nicolas Thomas and Caroline Humphrey, 191–228. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Jacobson, E. 1993. The Deer Goddess of Ancient Siberia: a Study in the Ecology of Belief. Leiden, New York, Köln: E. J. Brill. Jacobson, E., V. D. Kubarev, D. Tseveendorj. 2001. Mongolie du Nord-Ouest: Tsagaan Salaa/ Baga Oigor. Répertoire des Pétroglyphes d’Asie central, Fascicule no. 6. 2 vols. Paris: De Boccard. Jacobson-Tepfer, E. 2015. The Hunter, the Stag, and the Mother of Animals. Oxford University Press. Jacobson-Tepfer, E., and James Meacham. 2016. The Sacred Mountain Shiveet Khairkhan (Bayan Ölgiy aimag, Mongolia) and the Centering of Cultural Indicators in the Age of Nomadic Pastoralism. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 2016: 1–12. Jacobson-Tepfer, E. 2019. The Life of Two Valleys in the Bronze Age. Eugene, OR: Luminare Press. Kovalev A. A., ed. 2015. Drevneishie evropeitsi v serdtse Asii: Chemurychekskii kul’turnyi fenomen. St. Petersburg. Kubarev, V.D. 1988. Drevniye rospisi Karakola. Novosibirsk: Nauka. Kubarev, Vladimir D. 2002. Traces of Shamanic Motives in the Petroglyphs and Burial Paintings of the Gorno-Altai. In Spirits and Stones: Shamanism and Rock Art in Central Asia and Siberia, ed. A. Rozwadowski and M.M. Kosko, 99–119. Instytut Wschodni UAM: Poznan. Kubarev V. D., and E. Jacobson. 1996. Sibérie du Sud 3: Kalbak-Tash I (République de l’Altai). Répertoire des Pétroglyphes d’Asie central, No. 3., Mémoires de la Mission Archéologique Française en Asie central. Paris: De Boccard. Kyzlasov, I.L. 1982. Gora-praroditel’nitsa v fol’klore khakassov. Sovetskaya etnographiya 2: 83–92. Kyzlasov, L.R. 1986. Drevneyshaya Khakasiya. Moscow: Moscow State University. MAIC. Mongolian Altai Inventory Collection, Digital Collections, University of Oregon Libraries. https://oregondigital.org/sets/maic. Novgorodova, Ye. 1989. Drevnyaya Mongoliya. Moscow: Nauka. Okladnikov, A.P. 1966. Petroglify Angary. Moscow-Leningrad: Nauka. ———. 1981. Petroglify Chulutyn-Gola (Mongoliya). Novosibirsk: Nauka. Okladnikov, A.P., and A.I. Martynov. 1972. Sokrovishcha tomskikh pisanits. Moscow: Iskusstvo. Potapov, L.P. 1935. Sledy totemisticheskikh predstavlenii u altaitsev. Sovetskaya Etnografiya 4, #5: 135–152. ———. 1946. Kul’t gor na Altaye. Sovetskaya etnographiya 2: 145–160. ———. 1958. K izucheniyu shamanizma u narodov Sayan–Altayskogo nagor’ya. In Filologiya i istoriya mongol’skikh narodov, 314–322. Moscow: Academy of Sciences. ———. 1968. Shamans’ Drums of Altaic Ethnic Groups, pp. 205–234, in Dioszegi, V., ed. Popular Beliefs and Folklore Tradition in Siberia. The Hague: Mouton & Co., and Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University. Pshenitsyna, M.N., and B.N. Piatkin. 2006. Kurgan Razliv X: pamyatnik okunevskoi kul’tury. In Okunevskiy sbornik 2, Kul’tura I yeyë okurzhenie, ed. D.G. Savinov et al., 82–94. St. Petersburg: German Archaeological Institute and St. Petersburg State University. Pulleyblank, E.G. 1983. The Chinese and Their Neighbors in Prehistoric and Early Historic Times. In The Origins of Chinese Civilization, ed. D. Keightley, 411–466. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rozwadowski, Andrzej. 2001. Sun gods or shamans? Interpreting the ‘solar-headed’ petroglyphs of Central Asia. In The Archaeology of Shamanism, ed. Neil S. Price, 65–86. London and New York: Routledge. Rozwadowski, A. 2012. Rock Art, Shamanism and History. In Working with Rock Art, ed. B.W. Smith, K. Helskog, and E. Morris, 192–204. Wits University Press.

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———. 2014. In Search of Shamanic Themes in Eastern Siberian Rock Art (Sakha/Yakutia Republic). Shaman 22 (1–2): 76–96. Savinov, D.G., M.L. Podol’skii, A. Nagler, and K.V. Chugunov, eds. 2006. Okunevskiy sbornik 2. Kul’tura i ee okruzhenie. St. Petersburg: German Archaeological Institute and St. Petersburg State University. Sovetova, O.S. 2005. Petroglify tagarskoy epokhi na Yenisee. Novosibirsk: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography SO, RAS. Vadja, E.J. 2001. Yeniseian Peoples and Languages. Richmond: Curzon Press. Vajnstejn, S.I. 1968. The Tuvan (Soyot) Shaman’s Drum and the Ceremony of its ‘Enlivening’, pp. 331–338, in V. Dioszegi, ed. Popular Beliefs and Folklore Tradition in Siberia. The Hague: Mouton & Co., and Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University. Zabiyako, Andrey P., Anna A. Zabiyako, and Eugenia A. Zavadskaya. 2017. Reindeer Trail: History and Culture of the Amur Evenks. Blagoveschensk: Amur State University Publishing. Znamenski, Andrei A. 2003. Shamanism in Siberia. Dordrecht: Springer Science + Business Media.

Dr. Esther Jacobson-Tepfer is Professor Emerita at the University of Oregon. She investigates the ancient traditions of North Asian hunters and herders of the Altai Mountains. Her specializations include the relationship of archaeology and landscape and the documentation of rock art and surface monuments of the pre-Bronze, Bronze, and Iron Ages. In support of her primary interests, she has also investigated the lifeways and beliefs of Siberian peoples such as the Evenk and Ket.

Chapter 4

Humanoid Pillars and the Leopard’s Paw: Thoughts on Animal Masters and Gamekeepers in the Ancient Near East Diana L. Stein

Abstract The conventional, reversed historical perspective of Old World Archaeology has colored many an interpretation of its iconographic repertoire. The motif of the “Master of Animals” is a case in point, with recent surveys having traced its beginnings to pre-urban Mesopotamia. This chapter critically examines the Old World concept of this theme and focuses on one particular compound motif consisting of a hero and an animal adversary. Our emphasis on this classic combination has overshadowed the antiquity of its constituent parts and their likely origin among hunter-gatherer societies, who believe in a symbiotic relationship between shamans and animal gamekeepers. What happened to these two prominent characters as societies transitioned from foraging to food-producing? Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük, two early Neolithic sites in modern-day Turkey, suggest different scenarios, but neither involves a clear break with the past. Instead, the evidence supports cultural continuity while highlighting the distinct trajectories of the animal gamekeeper and his human counterpart, each of which undergoes modification in the face of social, economic, and environmental issues arising from local processes of neolithization. Keywords Göbekli Tepe · Çatalhöyük · Ancient Near East · Neolithic · Huntergatherers · Master of Animals · Gamekeepers · Shamanism

Introduction The “Master of Animals” is a familiar trope in ancient Near Eastern iconography, although our understanding of who it is and what it signifies differs from its definition outside the field of Old World Archaeology. Although everyone would agree that the term refers to a being with supernatural powers and a possible hybrid composition, the Old World Master of Animals is perceived as more of a human D. L. Stein (✉) Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. J. Chacon (ed.), The History and Environmental Impacts of Hunting Deities, Conflict, Environment, and Social Complexity 4, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37503-3_4

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Fig. 4.1 Contest scene with bull-man, lion, human-headed bull, 6-curled hero, and bull. Cylinder seal and modern impression. Ur, Iraq. 2400–2200 BCE (BM 121566d ©Trustees of the British Museum).

champion of animals than as an animal guardian of the game world. The roots of this discrepancy lie in the nature of our sources and the history of our field. Whereas elsewhere in the world, the meaning of the term “Master of Animals” is based on ethnographic studies of living hunter-gatherer societies, its Old World connotation rests on the interpretation of textual and iconographic material from urban societies that no longer exist. In the case of Near Eastern archaeology, which originated as an offshoot of classical and biblical studies, the focus of research has been gradually shifting backward in time. Inevitably, therefore, the bulk of evidence for our Master of Animals postdates the earliest hunter-gatherer societies by many millennia, and our primary reference point for this iconic image is several evolutionary stages removed from its Paleolithic counterpart. Our Old World concept of the Master of Animals comes from Greek mythological and biblical references to a human or divine figure dominating one or more animals. Images that match this description abound in the iconography of the ancient Near East, where the motif of the Master of Animals is conventionally traced to the proto-urban Ubaid era in the fifth millennium BCE (Costello 2010). Between this date and the end of the Achaemenid empire in the fifth century BCE, the icon has many variants, some of which defy classification. One of the best known examples is the “6-curled hero” in contest with lions, who features on elite cylinder seals of the third millennium BCE in Mesopotamia (Figs. 4.1 and 4.2). This particular manifestation of the Master of Animals has been identified with the Akkadian laḫmu (“the hairy one”), an apotropaic spirit known from the texts,1 but the cast of heroic figures 1

The oldest textual attestation of laḫmu comes from the Gudea Cylinder A (c. 2125 BCE). We do not know when this name was introduced or whether it applies to earlier representations of the “6curled hero.” Therefore, Wiggermann’s (1981–1982:99; 1992:165) suggestion that, originally, the laḫmu may have been a spirit of the rivers, who mastered wild animals and offered water to herd

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Fig. 4.2 Contest scene with 6-curled hero and lion. Seal of the scribe Shakullum, servant of PuzuShullat, priest of Dūrum. c. 2250 BCE (BM 89147 ©Trustees of the British Museum).

and animal adversaries is large, and their role in relation to one another is changeable and fluctuates over time. A male or female human, superhuman, or divine being may be pitted against wild, domestic, or supernatural animals that pose a threat, an asset, or a force that must be defeated, protected, or harnessed and controlled. Despite these many variables, the Master of Animals motif is generally perceived as a symbol of power and prestige (e.g., Rakic 2003, 2014; Costello 2010; Garrison 2010; Otto 2013). It appears on royal seals, palace facades, and portable luxury objects.2 The Late Bronze Age trade in portable luxury wares is often cited as the explanation for why this motif can be found across the Near Eastern and Mediterranean world at the end of the second millennium BCE. However, as several scholars have noted (e.g., Moorey 1987), cultural transmissions do not usually persist unless they align with native customs and/or fulfill a local purpose. In the case of the Master of Animals motif, I believe that it may be a combination of both: the motif resonated with belief systems rooted in a common hunter-gatherer past, and, updated and adapted, it continued to be emblematic of the ruling elite. Given our conventional, reversed historical approach to the Master of Animals, it is perhaps not surprising to find that a recent survey of this motif in Old World iconography has prioritized urban cultures and drawn the line at sedentary foodproducing societies, rejecting the possibility of earlier manifestations (Counts and Arnold 2010). It is argued that whatever the meaning of the human–animal hybrid figure during the Paleolithic period, it would have radically changed during the

animals, which is based on earlier representations of the third millennium BCE, cannot be confirmed. For a discussion on the figural representations identified with this mythological figure, see also Bonatz (2019). 2 For example, the chlorite vessels of the so-called “intercultural style” that circulated between Iran, Syria, and the Gulf regions during the third millennium BCE, and the metal, stone, and ivory objects of the so-called “international style” that circulated around the Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age (Kohl 1975, 2001; Feldman 2006:25–58).

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Fig. 4.3 Master of Animals and deer. Stamp seal, Tepe Gawra, Level XIII. Ubaid, 4500–3800 BCE (Amiet 1980: no. 40).

Neolithic period with the advent of animal domestication and the reconfiguration of human–animal relations (Counts and Arnold 2010:9–13). This rationale may be valid in the case of Europe, where human–animal depictions are conspicuously absent from the Neolithic art that has survived. However, there is no such hiatus in the Near East, and, in any case, it is odd that our Master of Animals is said to appear so late, several millennia after the first food-producing societies of the eighth millennium BCE. Interestingly, these oldest identified examples of our Master of Animals, which appear on Ubaid period stamp seals of the fifth millennium BCE (Figs. 4.3 and 4.4), have been likened to shamans (Hole 2010:234–9). Although one might dispute the accuracy of this label in the context of Tepe Gawra Level XIII and Susa I, both of which have temple-like structures (see Winkelman 1990), the superficial resemblance of this motif to an individual widely associated with hunter-gatherer societies suggests a degree of cultural and perhaps also ideological continuity. Over the past decade, we have learned a great deal more about the prehistoric periods preceding and including the transition from foraging to farming societies in the Near East. Thanks to new discoveries, analyses of bioarchaeological and archaeofaunal materials, and explanatory models derived from the social and cognitive sciences, it is now possible to revisit the theme of our Master of Animals from the opposite perspective, namely, that of the hunter-gatherer cultures that created this iconic figure rather than the biblical and classical worlds that inherited it. From this new vantage point, there are two animal masters—the gamekeeper and the

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Fig. 4.4 Master of Animals and lions. Stamp seal amulet, Susa I. Ubaid, 4500–3800 BCE (Amiet 1980: no. 119A).

shaman—and despite the “veritable explosion of symbolic behaviors” (BelferCohen and Goring Morris 2011:92) associated with the lifestyle changes that occurred during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN), neither master abruptly disappears with the advent of animal domestication. In the following, I review the evidence for hunter-gatherer societies, outline the nature of their relationship with the animal world, and discuss some of the archaeological correlates of their ritual activities before focusing on Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük to illustrate how two key, yet extremely different, early Neolithic sites adapted traditional customs in varying ways to deal with local issues like sedentism, overcrowding, increased social complexity, and diminishing local resources that arise from neolithization.

Setting the Scene and Defining the Characters A hunter-gatherer lifestyle is distinguished inter alia by the lack of evidence for morphologically domesticated plants and animals, and while precursors to herd and plant management strategies have been detected during the PPNA, wild plants and animals continue to be the main food source until the end of this period, c. 8800 BCE (Colledge 2004; Arbuckle and Özkaya 2006). Much of what we know about the lives and practices of ancient hunter-gatherers derives from ethnographic studies of

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their modern-day counterparts: that they tend to roam in groups of up to about 100 people across areas ranging in size between 7 and 500 square miles, for example, and that their relationship with the natural world is governed by a complex system of customs based on animistic beliefs. Animism is considered to have been prevalent among Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, anatomically modern humans who were capable of verbal communication (Dunbar 2003). A commonly held belief in the supernatural not only promotes a more benevolent world (praying to or placating supernatural powers to ensure that the natural world acts in a beneficial manner) but also helps enforce the societal norms. According to field studies of tribal peoples, the animistic worldview consists of interrelated sentient supernatural beings (BirdDavid 1999), and, although their number varies, it often includes an animal gamekeeper associated with powerful natural forces. Depending on the tradition, there may be one gamekeeper or many. In some traditions, the gamekeeper is depicted as a giant animal or as a powerful predator at the top of the food chain.3 In other traditions, she/he is a human with animal attributes or may assume an animal form at will. The hunters, often led by a shaman, must engage directly with the gamekeeper through propitiatory rituals, both before the hunt and afterward, when the skeletal remains of the slain animals are honored in various ways. As a facilitator of the hunt, the shaman mediates between the human, animal, and spirit worlds to help locate game animals, increase animal fertility, and maintain a balance with nature (Winkelman and Baker 2010). The process varies but typically begins with a ritual performance involving rhythmic beats, dance, costumes, and altered states of consciousness, during which the shaman calls upon the animal gamekeeper to release a certain number of animals or to guide the hunters to them. Following the hunt, in recognition of the gifts received, sacrifices are made, the curated bones of the predated animals are carefully deposited and/or displayed, and the event concludes with general feasting (Burkert 1979:54–56).4 Any violation of this mutual arrangement, such as failure to observe the ritual procedures that ensure proper game circulation, incurs the wrath of the gamekeeper(s), who may then withhold the animals and, in some traditions, avenge the spirit of the animals that have been improperly slain. Vengeance, a behavioral trait distinctive of humans, may come about through predator attacks, poisonous snakes, or fatal accidents. In order to placate the gamekeeper and alleviate tensions between the animal and human worlds, the shaman may undertake additional ritual activities (Eliade 1964; Ingold 1987; Brown and Emery 2008; Looper 2019). There has been little attempt so far to integrate these well-documented relational ontologies of hunter-gatherer cultures into our interpretation of the archaeological 3

These animals were not hunted for food and, therefore, do not feature among the remains of predated animals found at habitation sites. 4 The earliest clear evidence for feasting in the Near East is found at Kharaneh IV and Jilat VI (dated to the Early/Middle Epipaleolithic, c. 21/20 k cal BP), two exceptionally large aggregation locales on the western margins of the Azraq Basin in eastern Transjordan. It seems that in these early examples, feasting was not primarily associated with death rites (Goring-Morris and Belfer-Cohen 2011, 66–68 with References).

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and iconographical records from the Natufian and early Neolithic periods in the Near East. In part, this may be due to the fact that the archaeological correlates of the activities described above are seldom unique to hunting rituals. Like many other shamanic ceremonies, interactions with the animal gamekeeper would often take place in special locations and may include animal costumes and headdresses, musical instruments, incense, and intoxicants. The faunal remains of sacrifice and feasting are also nonspecific as is most associated decorative and figurative artwork, unless it includes some allusion to hunting, or the animals depicted correspond to those that were consumed. Deposits of curated bones and displays of curated skulls, techniques used by hunters to ensure animal regeneration, may denote a belief in an animal gamekeeper and an understanding of the reciprocal relationship between the human and animal worlds, but some of the visible bucrania could simply have been kept as hunting trophies and/or memorials of feasts (Testart 2006; Twiss 2008; Twiss and Russell 2009). Depictions of human–animal hybrids are also ambiguous, and their identification with an animal gamekeeper, a shaman, or some other being with supernatural powers depends very much on the context. So, for a long time, there has been little on which to pin the identification of an animal gamekeeper and related ritual practices. However, the recent discovery of several burials bearing the hallmarks of a shaman has changed the situation by introducing the possibility of the shamanic package and creating a stronger forum for speculation (Lewis-Williams 1990; Winkelman 1990; Price 2011). The clearest, though perhaps not the earliest, example of a such a burial was found at Hilazon Tachtit, a late Natufian (c. 10,000 BCE) cave site located on an escarpment c. 150 m above the Nahal Hilazon in western Galilee. The carefully constructed grave contains an elderly crippled woman accompanied by a large number of tortoise shells and token animal parts, including the tail of an aurochs, the foreleg of a boar, several articulated raptor wings, the pelvis of a leopard, and the skulls of two martens (Grosman et al. 2008; Grosman and Munro 2016). The burial’s remote location, its unusual contents, and the multistage funerary event associated with it led the excavators to infer that the occupant held a special status within her community, similar to that of a shaman. The comparison seems apt in view of the fact that we are dealing with bands of hunter-gatherers, although by this time, some of them reside in semipermanent settlements. If the combination of human–animal mortuary practices and a unique suite of grave goods may be considered indicative of a shaman, as Grosman et al. (2008) have argued,5 then the earliest known example dates to the middle Epipaleolithic/Geometric Kebaran period (c. 15,700–13,750 BCE) and consists of a human-fox burial accompanied by red ochre, worked bone implements, chipped and ground stone tools, and the remains of deer, gazelle, aurochs, and

5

Excluding human-dog burials, e. g., the burial of an adult female with a juvenile domestic dog from ‘Ain Mallaha (‘Eynan) (Davis and Valla 1978) and the human-dog burial from Hayonim Terrace (Tchernov and Valla 1997).

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tortoise.6 Fox remains are a common feature of burials in the later Natufian and early Neolithic (PPNA and B) periods.7 By the PPNB, some foraging bands had settled year round, so it is interesting to find yet another burial consisting of an elderly disabled woman accompanied by animal bones; this one is at Hatoula in the Shephelah region, containing the hornless bucranium of an aurochs (Le Mort 1989; Lechevallier and Ronen 1994). Based on the evidence of burials, then, shamans existed through the PPNA and into the PPNB, a period that coincides with the transition from foraging to foodproducing societies. Interestingly, some of the animals connected with shaman burials, in particular foxes8 and aurochsen,9 also feature in the art and fauna assemblage at a number of PPNA and B sites. The continuity of shamans and their associated animals puts a dent in the notion that radical changes occurred with respect to human–animal relationships following the advent of animal domestication at the beginning of the PPNB, but, in any event, changes in economy, sociocultural complexity, and beliefs do not necessarily take place in tandem across the ancient Near East. As Belfer-Cohen and Morris (2011) point out in the case of the Levant, the processes of neolithization unfolded at different rates in different locations. This is especially clear in the case of two sites, Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük, both of which have been the focus of extensive interdisciplinary study and offer a unique opportunity to examine the evolution of imagery and ritual practice in the context of local social, economic, and environmental developments.

Ritual and Imagery in Context: Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük Although often compared, Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük are two very different sites (Fig. 4.5). They are 450 km apart, belong to different regional traditions, and differ in terms of their economy, architecture, ritual settings, and iconography. Göbekli Tepe, 6 The earliest known cemetery at ‘Uyun al-Hammam in the southern Levant contained 11 individuals interred in 8 graves, of which 2 (graves 1 and VIII) pertain to the human-fox burial. The excavators conclude that the fox is closely associated with one individual because parts of both appear to have been moved from one grave to the other (Maher et al. 2011). 7 For example, the Natufian burials at ‘Ain Mallaha and Hayonim Cave (Valla and Khalaily 1998; Belfer-Cohen 1991, 1995) and the Neolithic (mid-PPNB) ritual burial site of Kfar Hahoresh in the Lower Galilee, Israel (Horwitz and Goring-Morris 2004). 8 Foxes frequently occur as motifs on the T-shaped pillars and elsewhere at Göbekli Tepe (Mahler et al. 2011, 8). The high relative frequency of fox bones (mainly the red fox, Vulpes vulpes) is a typical feature of most PPNA and Early PPNB archaeofaunas from the Euphrates drainage area and the southern Levant. This skeletal bias is also observed at Göbekli Tepe and can be interpreted as evidence for the exploitation of fox for its pelt (Peters and Schmidt 2004:207 with References). 9 Deposits of aurochs bucrania are described from different PPN sites, e.g., Hallan Çemi Tepesi, Tell Halula, Jerf el Ahmar, Tell Mureybet, and Tell ‘Abr 3 as well as at Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük (see Peters et al. (2012:33) with References).

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Fig. 4.5 Map of Neolithic sites (Courtesy of Nigel Goring-Morris and Anna Belfer-Cohen).

a megalithic site that was founded at the beginning of the PPNA (tenth millennium BCE), depended on wild plant and animal food sources, whereas Çatalhöyük, a village of agglomerated mudbrick houses that spans PPNB and C (eighth to sixth millennia BCE), relied on domesticated sheep and goats as well as domesticated cereals and pulses (Hodder and Meskell 2011). Contrary to expectation, perhaps, hints of an animal gamekeeper are more apparent in the material and iconographic record at Çatalhöyük, the younger site, whereas at Göbekli Tepe, the older site, this guardian figure may be portrayed in the human form.

Göbekli Tepe Göbekli Tepe, one of the earliest and best preserved of several megalithic sites of the PPN in southeastern Anatolia, is located on a limestone plateau above the plain of Harran (Fig. 4.6). It is characterized by a cluster of monumental, multiphase

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Fig. 4.6 A reconstruction of Göbekli Tepe (art Fernando G. Baptista, ©2021 National Geographic Partners, LLC).

enclosures that span the PPNA and B (tenth to seventh millennia BCE). Oval to circular in shape, these roofed enclosures center on two monolithic pillars that stand up to 6 m high and weigh as much as 10 tons (Schmidt 1999, 2005; Peters and Schmidt 2004). Many of the central pillars exhibit anthropomorphic features such as heads, shoulders, arms, and hands. Some “wear” a fox pelt loincloth (Fig. 4.7), and, often, their sides are decorated in bas-relief with representations of wild animals (Figs. 4.8, 4.9, 4.10): snakes, wild boars, and foxes as well as aurochsen, wild sheep, and cats (Peters and Schmidt 2004, Table 2; Peters et al. 2012).10 The addition of details like ornamental symbols indicate that an attempt was made to personalize each pillar (Clare 2020). The apparent absence of domestic equipment suggests that these enclosures functioned as ceremonial venues, and the discovery of ritual

10

Snakes are the most common motif at Göbekli Tepe. Their shape corresponds to vipers (Peters and Schmidt 2004:183). In the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Upper Euphrates basin, the snake motif appears to have been widespread. This is illustrated by findings from PPNA Jerf el Ahmar and Tel Qaramel, Early-Middle PPNB Nevalı Çori, and Körtik Tepe. At Nevalı Çori, for example, a limestone sculpture of a human head decorated with a snake was found in the wall of a ritual building (Hauptman 1993). At Körtik Tepe, several stone vessels decorated with snake motifs were present among the grave goods (Peters and Schmidt 2004:214 with References). Leopard bones are extremely rare at Neolithic sites (Russell 2016:27). They are found in Neolithic contexts at Çatalhöyük, Bouqras, and Tell ‘Abr (Peters and Schmidt 2004:184 with References).

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Fig. 4.7 Pillar 18 (Enclosure D), Göbekli Tepe. (© Robert Schoch and Catherine Ulissey).

paraphernalia—including a stone mask, a fox tail, and raptor wings—would support this impression (Dietrich et al. 2018). Although there is some question as to whether the fox tail had originally been attached to pillar D near which it was buried, the collection of objects is consistent with the contents of shaman burials, and the suggestion by Peters and Schmidt (2004:212) that the enclosures witnessed shamanic rituals seems plausible. The purpose of these rituals is a matter of ongoing debate. Discrepancies in taxonomic composition and relative frequencies between the archaeofaunal and iconographical records are said to support mortuary rather than hunting rituals.11 However, the lack of evidence for domesticated plants and animals tells us that hunting must still have been a regular activity. We are thus faced with a conundrum. Although traditional hunting rituals are likely to have been performed among a variety of ceremonies that took place within these multipurpose 11 “The taxa most frequently depicted are snake, fox and wild boar, whereas the bone remains from Göbekli Tepe reflect the over-whelming importance of aurochs, goitered gazelle, and Asiatic wild ass in terms of meat procurement” The imagery of snakes and scavengers, which is elsewhere associated with burials, supports a mortuary function, but the absence of vultures, another wellknown funerary motif, is problematic (Schmidt 2006; Peters and Schmidt 2004:209–15 with References), and, to date, few burials have been found at Göbekli.

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Fig. 4.8 Front of Pillar 33, Göbekli Tepe, Enclosure D, 10th–9th mill. BCE. snakes and spider (Photo Irmgard Wagner, GT02_P33_Diw0004, ©Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Göbekli Tepe Projekt).

venues, the illustrations depicted on the pillars have nothing to do with what kind or how many game animals were killed and consumed. What, then, does the imagery inside these venues mean, and how was it relevant to hunting rituals among other ceremonial performances? From the perspective of hunter-gatherer societies, some of the central anthropomorphic pillars that Peters and Schmidt (2004:213) are tempted to describe as threedimensional representations of shamans could portray supernatural beings—like gamekeepers—in the human form. In this case, the bas-relief images of dangerous wild animals that adorn their sides, such as snakes, scorpions, lions, and boars, may serve as graphic reminders of the commitment to reciprocal exchange and the fatal consequences of abusing such an agreement or upsetting the balance with nature. Hunters who violate ceremonial protocol risk incurring the wrath of the spiritual or animal guardian, who may cause them illness or death (Brown and Emery 2008: 311). Neither the identity of the colossal humanoid pillars nor the message of their frightening imagery pertains only to hunting rituals. Shamans perform ceremonies

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Fig. 4.9 Side of Pillar 2, Göbekli Tepe, Enclosure A, 10th–9th mill. BCE. aurochs above fox and crane (Schmidt 2006, Abb. 46) (Photo Christoph Gerber, GT97_P02_9701a, ©Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Göbekli Tepe Projekt).

for a variety of reasons such as intertribal agreements, initiation and passage rites, and burial practices. Many of them would have engaged some form of superhuman agency and required a commitment of some kind. In this regard, the humanoid columns would prefigure the later Near Eastern custom of concluding oaths, treaties, and royal decrees with a verbal threat of similar divine retribution against persons in breach of the stated conditions. An atmosphere of intense fear and anxiety inside the megalithic venues at Göbekli Tepe may also have helped trigger a spiritual experience among the participants, as Peters and Schmidt (2004:212) pointed out. Highintensity events, which seem to be characteristic of the PPNA and B periods, are more memorable (Hodder 2011:215–6 apud Whitehouse 2004). We may speculate about why there appears to be a concentration of such events during a transitional period between one lifestyle and another (see below), but a desire to instill changes to the existing ideology might well have been among them. In this connection, it is interesting to note that the gamekeeper, if that is what some of the central pillars at

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Fig. 4.10 Front of Pillar 11, Göbekli Tepe, Lions Pillar Building, 10th– 9th mill. BCE. lions, (Photo Dieter Johannes, GT98_P11_Ddj0005, ©Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Göbekli Tepe Projekt).

Göbekli Tepe represent, assumes the human form perhaps for the first time and that during the PPNA–B at least, this particular perception of the supernatural appears to be unique to southeastern Anatolia.12 Over the course of the tenth and ninth millennia BCE, when megalithic sites like Göbekli Tepe first appear in southeastern Anatolia,13 there is a noticeable shift in settlement pattern, with evidence of nuclear families and bands clustering into larger tribal groups. The larger and less mobile these groups became, the more they depended on local plant and animal resources and the greater the tensions between them and among their members. At early Neolithic sites in southeastern Anatolia,

12 See Orrelle (2011) for a discussion on other possible representations of anthropomorphic deities during the Natufian and PPN periods. 13 A dozen or more similar sites have been found, including Karahan, Sefer Tepe, and Hamzan, which each have hundreds of T-shaped pillars and are less than 80 km from one another (Çelik 2000, 2004, 2006; Schmidt 2005).

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animal exploitation reflects a broad-spectrum strategy combined with intensive exploitation of one dominant taxon (Peters and Schmidt 2004:207; Arbuckle and Özkaya 2006:126). The need to regulate the hunt in this region would then have been acute, and the role of the gamekeeper as a sole caretaker of wild fauna may have had to be supplemented by intertribal agreements as well as increased community events and agreements to control the number of hunting expeditions and limit the number of hunters to men with exceptional strength and skill.14 The megalithic enclosures at Göbekli Tepe and other nearby sites may be one manifestation of the intensified rituals and symbolic activities that were aimed at fostering social cohesion, alleviating social stress, and protecting the local resources (see Jochim 1987; BelferCohen and Goring-Morris 2011). Their construction involved teamwork and organization. Their purpose and decoration implies a consensus. One of the first challenges facing the builders of megalithic structures, such as those found at Göbekli Tepe, would have been integrating the various animistic or relational ontologies of the assembled hunting bands into a unified system of symbolic communication that was understood and accepted across southeastern Turkey. The gamekeeper and other nonhuman agents shared at least one common characteristic. They were sentient beings that frequently exhibited human temperaments (e.g., Brown and Emery (2008):304), so representing them in a colossal human form may have been the solution, an example perhaps of “an adaptive nuance pertaining to social and symbolic realms that occurred in order for the Neolithic way of life to succeed” (Belfer-Cohen and Goring-Morrris 2011:92). Many similar examples occur in later historical times, where adjustments to the pantheon were made to accommodate new peoples, political boundaries, or religious ideologies.15 However, a change in the portrayal of the supernatural does not necessarily imply a change in the belief system. I would argue that this would have been a step too far for these recently settled hunter-gatherers16 and that, in common with foraging communities around the world, the animal gamekeeper continued to play some role in the beliefs and ritual practices at Göbekli Tepe and neighboring sites, where subsistence hunting continued to be the norm.

14 On the correlation between religious, social, and economic change, see Hodder (2011:116–17). The preferred hunting time at Göbekli Tepe was midsummer to autumn, following the harvest of staple foods such as (wild) cereals and pulses (Peters et al. 2012:20). 15 One of many examples occurs during the so-called Akkadian empire in Mesopotamia (twentyfourth to twenty-second centuries BCE), when the Sumerian pantheon was restructured and its deities were replaced with their Akkadian equivalents. 16 “The pace of change within the social realm is, by default, very slow, as it comprises the basic foundation and frame of reference for the identity of any particular group; so, even when changes occurred, they were incorporated within previously entrenched frameworks” (Belfer-Cohen and Goring Morris 2011:92).

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Fig. 4.11 Reconstruction of Çatalhöyük and the surrounding landscape during the spring flood, (drawn by John Swogger, Hodder 2006: pl. 3).

Çatalhöyük Çatalhöyük, by contrast, was a stand-alone settlement founded in the PPNB (Fig. 4.11) that seems to have been formed by the amalgamation of several small, relatively permanent PPNA villages like Boncuklu Höyük (c. 8500–7500 BCE) on the Konya Plain. Over the first millennium of its occupation (c. 7100–6250 BCE), the population at Çatalhöyük is said to have expanded dramatically due to increased fertility rather than immigration (Larsen et al. 2015:36–7). This would have resulted in a more homogeneous community than existed at Göbekli Tepe, so altering the format or visual encoding of its traditional customs and beliefs would have been less of a concern. Indeed, as Hodder (2011:117) points out, the elaborate rituals and symbolism that we see at Çatalhöyük did not suddenly emerge as a result of agglomeration but already existed prior to the aggregation on the Konya Plain. The division of houses into domestic and devotional halves, the subfloor burials, the elaborate wall installations, and the importance of feasting, for example, are all prefigured at Boncuklu.17

17

At Boncuklu Höyük, a focus on hunting large bull aurochs and the curation of cattle bucrania within structures suggests that bovine-centric feasting practices extend back to the earliest phases of the central Anatolian Neolithic in the ninth millennium cal. BC (Peters et al. 2012:29–30 with References).

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Fig. 4.12 Bucrania and horn cores set in a bench. Çatalhöyük, Shrine VI.61. PPNB, 8th–7th mill. BCE (Mellaart 1975: fig. 58a).

Signs of a more conservative outlook at Çatalhöyük abound. There are no megalithic or communal buildings, ritual activity was confined to the domestic sphere, and representations of large game prevailed long after the domestication of animals. Some of the mudbrick houses display frequent ritual activity on a more regular basis than do others. The evidence includes multiple layers of painted and plastered mural decoration, bucrania embedded in walls and benches, and “special” caches of animal bones, including “the teeth of foxes and weasels, the tusks of wild boars, the claws of bears, and the beaks of vultures” (Hodder and Meskell 2011). The prominent display of wild bull horns (Fig. 4.12) would conform with the hunter’s traditional obligation to honor the spirit owners of the animals by curating their skeletal remains and placing them in sacred places. According to ethnographic research, “bones retain a latent agency that allows for the regeneration of the species” (Brown and Emery 2008:313). Of particular relevance to the animal gamekeeper theme is a series of mural paintings that the excavator, James Mellaart, classified as narrative hunting scenes (Fig. 4.13).18 Mellaart (1966:189) realized that these murals depicted something other than actual hunting expeditions. The central animal is not wounded or killed, many of the surrounding hunters wear costumes, and, while armed, they appear not to use their weapons. As a result, most scholars follow Mellaart in describing these hunting scenes as baiting scenes (e.g., Wengrow 2011), but the purpose of such an activity is never explained. Animal baiting or teasing, it seems to me, would be alien to the ethos of traditionally minded hunters, who would risk the gamekeeper’s wrath by mistreating the animals under his protection. A reexamination of these murals through the shamanic lens offers alternative interpretations. All of the central animals represent wild species (bulls, bear, stags, boars, Asiatic ass) that are also present in the faunal assemblage (Russell and Meece 2006), so hunting expeditions and their associated 18 These narrative murals are associated with two buildings in Mellaart’s levels V and III: “Shrine” F.V.1 and A.III.1 (Mellaart 1966).

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Fig. 4.13 Hunting scene with great bull, Mural painting, Çatalhöyük, Shrine F V.1, PPNB, 8th–7th mill. BCE (Drawn by Raymonde Enderlé Ludovivi, Mellaart 1966:Pl. LIVb).

rituals took place despite the availability of domestic sheep and goats.19 Instead of animal baiting, perhaps the painted murals portray a ritual dance, one of various methods attested among traditional foraging societies to honor the spirit beings associated with the hunt (Looper 2019:124). In keeping with these traditions, many of the depicted hunters wear the costume of a leopard, a fearsome predator that qualifies as a gamekeeper, an animal who sits at the top of the food chain and does not feature in the faunal assemblage of predated animals (see footnote 3). The prominence of the leopard motif among the wall decorations at Çatalhöyük would support this suggestion. A gamekeeper in the form of a wild feline would also clarify the significance of a pendant fashioned from a leopard’s paw that accompanied an unusual burial in building 42 (level IV). The occupant, an older adult woman, lies on her side clasping the plastered skull of an adult man. While detached skulls are often associated with an ancestor cult (Hodder 2006), evidence from Nevali Çori indicates that some skulls were reworked as masks (Prof. Dr. phil. Nat. Dr. med. Michael Schultz [Göttingen], personal communication, 2021). Masks typically belong to the regalia of a shaman, and the relic of a fierce predator would be fitting for someone whose power is commonly associated with animal helpers. In this case, the pendant would indicate the woman’s status and ability to channel the spirit world in the guise of a leopard gamekeeper. Her identification with a shaman agrees with Hodder’s (2006) view that the burial represents a prominent individual. Moreover, her association with a leopard is not unique. The special relationship between felines and high-status women is also apparent in the famous figurine of an elderly nude female seated on a pair of leopards (Fig. 4.14),20 another possible portrayal of a shaman. 19 Domestic caprines were kept in large numbers from the beginning of the site’s occupation, and the economy is based on livestock husbandry by the end (Peters et al. 2012:8). 20 On the enigma of the leopard and the discovery of the leopard pendant at Çatalhöyük, see Hodder (2006). The famous image of the nude female seated on a leopard throne (height 20 cm) was found in a grain bin in “Shrine” A11.1. Although this is a unique find, numerous figurines of corpulent

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Fig. 4.14 Elderly woman seated on leopard chair. Clay figurine, Çatalhöyük, Shrine All.1, PPNB, 7th mill. BCE (Hodder 2006: pl. 24).

The impression that elderly female shamans continue to be active at Çatalhöyük during later occupations of the site is reinforced by the famous “bull hunt” (Fig. 4.13), one of several hunting scenes in which a corpulent nude female plays an active role. In this particular scene, Mellaart (1966:188) identifies a drum in the hands of the figure above the bull’s tail, and he describes the figure jumping on the bull’s back as “ecstatic.” The release of endorphins through music and dance can have this effect, but ecstasy may not have been the only objective here. Group dance events also serve as a means of diffusing tension and promoting social cohesion (Winkelman and Baker 2010:129–30; Dissanakaye 2018:93). Although isolated and far removed from the amassing bands of hunter-gatherers in southeastern Turkey, Çatalhöyük was not immune to the tensions caused by neolithization. The growth in population and its concentration within a confined area would have created social friction and placed stress on local resources. These claims are corroborated by the bioarchaeological record of human remains at

women and women wearing feline skins were found at both Çatalhöyük and Haçilar (Mellaart 1967; Voigt 2007; Meskell and Nakamura 2009, 2016). For color photographs, see Hodder (2006: 20 and 24).

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Çatalhöyük. In a sample of 93 skulls, more than a fourth showed evidence of interpersonal violence consisting of (in some cases multiple) injuries sustained from blows to the head from hard, round objects like the clay balls that were found at the site. The number of cranial injuries increased during the Middle period (c. 6610–6250 BCE), when population size and density had reached maximum levels (Larsen et al. 2019).21 From around this time until the site’s abandonment (c. 6250–5950 BCE), there are signs that the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük traveled increasingly greater distances for the cultivation and acquisition of animal and plant food. Heavy exploitation of the immediate region, environmental deterioration, climate change, and human factors all contributed to the depletion in locally available resources (Larsen et al. 2015:32–43 with References), and competition would have been rife. Against this background of violence and rivalry, the elaborate decorations and intensification of ceremonial activities at Çatalhöyük appear in a different light. The perpetuation of hunting and associated rituals in the context of the use of domesticated plants and animals could have fulfilled several purposes. Apart from reinforcing community values, they helped protect crops and herds against wild intruders. Hunting dangerous wild animals was also an important measure of social status, a means of establishing rank and regulating social order.22 Perhaps the so-called hunting scenes represent a preliminary event to test the fitness, courage, and stamina of prospective hunters. As Bataille (1986) observed, violence in ritual often produces moments of transcendence, and the shared experience of ecstasy would have united the shaman and hunter, thereby further enhancing the latter’s status. The need to ensure a regular supply of animals for ritual sacrifices and feasts may also have prolonged the hunting of large wild animals. Analyses of the faunal evidence at Çatalhöyük indicate that wild bulls, though no longer part of the staple diet, were specially selected for use in ritual contexts (Russell and Meece 2006; Twiss and Russell 2009:21–29)23 and that, in common with many PPN sites, they appear to be the feast animal of choice.24 The faunal assemblage at Çatalhöyük 21 At its peak between 6610 and 6250 BCE, the population at Çatalhöyük is estimated to be between 3500 and 8000. Its funerary record consists of 470 complete individuals in stratified primary contexts and the partial remains of 272 individuals found in secondary and tertiary contexts (Larsen et al. 2019). 22 For a discussion on status markers and public feasting in relation to Körtik Tepe and Hallan Çemi in the upper Tigris drainage, see Peters et al. (2012:29). 23 Excavations yielded 12,466 cattle horn cores and horn core fragments, mostly in “special” contexts, defined as installations on walls or in benches, feasting spreads, and caches (Hodder and Meskell 2011:237). Wild cattle make up 54% of all animal bones in installations and special deposits and 40% of the animal reliefs. Other bucrania include wild ram and goat skulls and horns with the heads plastered (Russell and Meece 2006, Table 14.5). 24 At Göbekli Tepe, aurochs constituted about 50% of the total meat consumed, whereas gazelle, the most frequently hunted animal, only contributed some 15% (Peters and Schmidt (2004:208); Hodder and Meskell (2011:241–3). In the earlier part of the sequence at Çatalhöyük (c. 7400–6500 BCE), wild cattle constituted only 20–25% of the faunal assemblage, but they

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shows a drop in percentage of wild cattle bones over time, likely due to overhunting.25 It has been suggested that the decline in number of wild bulls prompted the adoption of cattle herding at Çatalhöyük, as evidence of domesticated cattle appears after 6500 BCE (Peters et al. 2012:12 with References).26 The overall depletion of wild animals also amounts to a breach of contract with the gamekeeper, signaling a departure from conventional beliefs despite the continued focus on wild animals in the iconography. What we see couched in terms of conventional hunting rituals may, therefore, represent man’s mastery over nature.27 In that case, the “hunting scenes” would indeed mark a significant shift in human relations with the animal world and its gamekeeper during the Neolithic, as Counts and Arnold (2010) surmised.

Summary Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük, two early Neolithic sites, present very different perspectives on the evolution of traditional, Paleolithic customs and beliefs during the transition from foraging to food-producing societies. At Göbekli Tepe, an older megalithic site reliant on subsistence hunting, which exhibits no signs of conflict, the heterogeneity of the population may have prompted changes to the iconography of the gamekeeper inter alia but not necessarily to the associated practices and beliefs. At Çatalhöyük, a younger village settlement based on farming and herding, where violence was on the rise, the homogeneous inhabitants retained their hunting traditions and symbolic syntax, but the purpose and significance of these rituals and their representation may have been modified in line with the changing social, economic, and environmental conditions. The discrepancies between these two sites highlight the uneven processes of neolithization and the complexity of determining a temporal

featured disproportionately in feasts (Russell and Meece 2006; Russell et al. 2005; Twiss and Russell 2009:21). At this time, there is also a marked rise in the importance of wild cattle in the southern Levant. This is reflected by the disposal of distinct concentrations of Bos bones within well-defined features/pits in early PPNB sites. Examples include Motza in the Judean hills and Kfar HaHoresh in the Lower Galilee (Horwitz and Goring-Morris 2004; Khalaily et al. 2007). These concentrations appear to represent feasting, which is often, but not always, linked to death (GoringMorris and Horwitz 2007; Twiss 2008). 25 The aurochs, the last remaining large game animal, became extinct in the sixth millennium BCE (Marom 2019; Yener et al. 2000). 26 At Çayönü, efforts to domesticate cattle are believed to date back to the transition from Early to Middle PPNB. One exception to this general trend comes from the Early Chalcolithic village of Köşk Höyük in the Niğde region of central Anatolia. The presence of roasting pits dominated by the remains of wild equids and aurochs suggests the continuation of periodic large game hunting and feasting events into the early sixth millennium BCE when such practices generally become increasingly rare in the archaeological record (Peters et al. 2012:31). 27 This theme has been proposed in connection with later Minoan bull-leaping scenes (Younger 1995).

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or geographical limit to the existence of the animal gamekeeper in the ancient Near East.

Post-Neolithic Survivals of Gamekeepers and Animal Masters The inclination to distinguish between foraging and food-producing societies stems from the conventional subdivision of Old World Archaeology into history and prehistory, two subfields that often belong to separate university departments and rarely communicate. However, the methodological prejudices against establishing connections between the prehistoric and historical eras have begun to break down (Garfinkel 2006:246). Sites like Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük testify to a degree of cultural and iconographic overlap between Paleolithic hunter-gatherers and early Neolithic food producers, and although over time, hunter-gatherers gradually retreat to the margins of civilization, direct and indirect contact with other cultures continues (Stein 2006, Akkermans 2019). Shamans living in settled communities may have adapted their practices in response to social, economic, and political developments (see below), but the beliefs and practices of their ancient and contemporaneous counterparts living in foraging societies would have never been lost and forgotten. In fact, it appears that they were kept very much alive. Recent discoveries of desert kites (dry-stone constructions designed to trap game animals) in the Khabur basin of northeastern Syria and across the entire region suggest that game hunting continued to be a communal activity as late as the Early Bronze Age. As a mass-kill strategy that possibly traces back to the Neolithic PPNB (Helms and Betts 1987), these kites have been dated to the fourth and third millennia BCE, a time that coincides with the transition from pre- to early-urban societies in Syria. Because livestock breeding now provided a regular meat supply, the preservation of communal hunting events would have fulfilled a social purpose, and the associated rock engravings of animals and superhuman figures suggest a religious overtone (Zeder et al. 2013:114–122). Such large-scale reenactments of ancient traditions involving mixed (nomadic and sedentary?) groups were likely intended to reinforce the social structure as well as to transmit customs and beliefs down the generations. Moreover, for the sake of general comprehension, they are likely to have been structured in a conventional manner (Durkheim 1961[1912]). This suggests a degree of continuity in religious values and symbolic syntax, so it is plausible to assume that some form of the animal gamekeeper survived in the iconography of pre- and early-urban cultures in the fourth and third millennia BCE. But how is the Paleolithic gamekeeper related to our proto-urban Master of Animals? More than 3000 petroglyphs are linked to the desert kites on the Hemma Plateau in northeastern Syria. Among them are three representations of human figures with animal adjuncts. One stands on a bull, another combats a lion, and the third stands on an indeterminate animal, described as a dog (Figs. 4.15, 4.16, 4.17). Although

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Fig. 4.15 Human with mace(?) riding bull. Rock engraving, Hemma Plateau. 3rd mill. BCE (Van Berg et al. 2004: fig. d).

Fig. 4.16 Human with mace combating lion, Rock engraving, Hemma Plateau. 3rd mill. BCE (LeMaître and Van Berg 2008: fig. 6, ©Mission archéologique de Khishâm).

comparisons with late third millennium BCE depictions of the Mesopotamian gods Adad, Ishtar, and Gula may be overstated (LeMaître and Van Berg 2008), these engravings clearly portray superhuman beings. Their anthropomorphic form recalls the humanoid pillars at Göbekli Tepe, some of which, I suggested, may represent an animal gamekeeper, and their association with powerful animals (in two cases, at least) is also in line with ancient beliefs. The continued importance of the wild bull

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Fig. 4.17 Human with mace riding a canid (?) with a dog. Rock engraving, Hemma Plateau. 3rd mill. BCE (Van Berg et al. 2004: fig. f).

Fig. 4.18 Lion attacking bull with plant. Cylinder seal, unprov. Early 3rd mill. BCE (Amiet 1980: no. 412).

and cat in connection with hunting is noteworthy. Both animals have past associations with shaman burials and ritual performances over which shamans likely have presided. The use of bucrania to mark divinity in historical times indicates that the aurochs retained its significance as a powerful force of nature long after its demise in the sixth millennium BCE. One wonders, therefore, if echoes of an animal gamekeeper also survived. The iconography of the fifth and third millennia BCE is replete with images of lions and bulls (Figs. 4.18, 4.19, 4.20, 4.21), and both animals play a prominent role in the third millennium BCE contest scene (Figs. 4.22 and 4.23). Their relationship vis-à-vis one another and other wild or domestic animals is often ambiguous, but a surreal setting is suggested by the presence, in many cases, of a (sacred?) plant or the incorporation of human features and attitudes (Stein 2017). This otherworldly scenario is reinforced by the addition of our Master of Animals to the contest scene, a human figure with supernatural powers whose bird- or animalheaded antecedents actually date back beyond the Ubaid period. The association between bird- or animal-headed humans and hunting occurs at Dhuweila, a late PPNB (seventh millennium BCE) campsite in the basalt steppe of eastern Jordan

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Fig. 4.19 Lion, bull protome, bull and plant. Cylinder seal, unprov. Late 4th–early 3rd mill. BCE (Amiet 1980: no. 516).

Fig. 4.20 Lions attacking bulls, goat head and hindquarters. Cylinder seal, Tell Agrab, Temple of Shara. 3rd mill. BCE (Amiet 1980: no. 756).

Fig. 4.21 Lions attacking bulls, goat, vessel, animal limbs. Cylinder seal, Ur SIS 4–5. Early 3rd mill. BCE (Amiet 1980: no. 779).

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Fig. 4.22 Lions attacking human-headed bulls, nude hero holding inverted lion. Cylinder seal, Fara. Mid 3rd mill. BCE (Amiet 1980: no. 1006).

Fig. 4.23 Nude hero between lions attacking human-headed bulls, miniature lion attacking gazelle, inscription. Cylinder seal, unprov. 3rd mill. BCE (Amiet 1980: no. 1078).

(Fig. 4.24). This figure, together with other costumed dancers wielding sticks or spears, appears on one of hundreds of engravings linked to hunting rituals (Betts 2002). Another example of a bird-headed man, this time taking an active part in the hunt, features among the aforementioned petroglyphs on the Hemma Plateau (Fig. 4.25). Frank Hole’s (2010) identification of the bird- or animal-headed Master of Animals with a shaman seems plausible in light of their traditional role as facilitators of the hunt and their close spiritual interaction with animal gamekeepers. Indeed, as I have argued elsewhere (Stein 2020), the iconic image of a hero combating a lion could represent our human Master of Animals (shaman) pitted against the animal gamekeeper in an existential struggle for power and control.

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Fig. 4.24 Dancing figures in costume. Rock engraving, Dhuweila, Late PPNB, 7th millennium BCE (image reproduced by permission of Alison Betts). Fig. 4.25 Bird (?)-headed man driving Persian gazelle into kite. Petroglyph, Hemma Plateau. 3rd mill. BCE (Van Berg et al. 2004: fig. b).

Rather than one version of the Animal Master replacing the other, as Counts and Arnold (2010) claimed, it would appear that both emerged from foraging societies intact, to be embraced as powerful symbols by pre-urban and urban societies, with

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subtle adjustments to their appearance, role, and relationship reflecting shifting sociopolitical agendas.

Conclusions Early signs of adjustments to the shaman’s role are already apparent at the PPNA site of Göbekli Tepe, where the construction of monumental enclosures implies a degree of social stratification and the existence of powerful leaders. Quite likely, shamans were among them, on their way to becoming shaman healers and eventually priests (Winkelman 1990). At Göbekli Tepe, they performed in temple-like structures with a limited capacity of 30–35 people.28 More than 20 enclosures have been excavated so far. It is unlikely that each one had its own shaman, but, in any case, two per enclosure seems excessive. So, the pair of central humanoid pillars must have represented someone else. Spiritually powerful animals in the humanized form is one possible interpretation of these pillars. In this case, it would represent a first, tentative step toward the creation of an anthropomorphic pantheon that prevails in later historical times, where wild and dangerous animals appear as adjuncts to some of the main deities. The leopard bones deposited beneath the White Temple at Uruk—attributed to Anu, the head of the Sumerian pantheon—and the seated leopard painted on the altar of the temple at Tell ‘Uqair, both dated to the early urban Uruk period in the late fourth millennium BCE, testify to the longevity of beliefs in an animal guardian or a gamekeeper and his association with powerful spiritual forces (see also Stein 2006: 32). As the comparison between Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük demonstrates, neither shaman nor animal gamekeeper evolves along a single continuous trajectory, but the fact that they both belonged to a way of life that at one time was universal may account for the widespread popularity of our Master of Animals motif comprising a human hero and an animal adversary. After millennia of transmission through regular, standardized ritual performances, both elements of this familiar trope emerge together in the third millennium BCE as an icon of power and prestige. By this time, their relationship was no longer equally balanced. It was heavily skewed in favor of the shaman/ priest/ king, and he was now solely responsible for the welfare of the environment and animal kingdom.

28

Verhoeven (2002:245) estimates that the enclosures at Göbekli Tepe could accommodate up to 20–35 people at any one time, and he believes that the ritual buildings at ‘Ain Ghazal, Nevalı Çori, and Çayönü were similarly restricted to a segment of the population. According to Hodder and Meskell (2011:244), these numbers could be doubled or tripled, given the size of some of the Göbekli enclosures (e.g., the Double Pillar building, which measures 25x5m). D. Baird (in Hodder and Meskell (2011:251)) agrees and increases the estimate to between 30 and 150 people. However, Peters and Schmidt (2004:213) point out that the foundations of the central twin pillars did not insure good stability, making mass gatherings unlikely, especially ones involving group movement or dance.

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Dr. Diana L. Stein is an Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. A specialist in the art and archaeology of the ancient Near East, she has conducted fieldwork in Jordan, Syria, and southeastern Turkey. Her research interests include ritual and religion, and the iconography and use of seals and seal impressions.

Chapter 5

Baghan Deo: An Indian Tiger God Meenakshi Dubey-Pathak

Abstract India is home to many spectacularly beautiful forms of wildlife. However, for the forest peoples of India, there can be no doubt that the tiger is the most awe-inspiring animal in the jungle. Tigers have always inspired legends and have been considered particularly powerful creatures or even deities that should be revered and propitiated. Bhagan Deo, Baghbana, Baghasur, Baghaisur Baba, or Baghaut Baba are the various names given to the Tiger God (supernatural master of tigers) venerated by the Baiga, Gond, Korku, and Kol tribes of Central India. Outside each village, inhabitants maintain a shrine, known as Bagheshwer Pat, which is dedicated to the Tiger God. Among the Saora tribes of the state of Orissa, this animal master is known as Kinnasum. In the past, once in a year, each village used to offer a slain animal to the Tiger God and it was believed that if this supernatural being did not receive such an offering, then he would grow angry and harm the villagers. During the course of fieldwork in Central India, I interviewed Gond and Baiga informants from the state of Madhya Pradesh about the special relationship they have with tigers and the Tiger God. In the past, elders would meet outside the village and the Bhumia/Bhagat/gunia (shaman) would summon a tiger by way of special chants. When a tiger appeared, it would be offered chickens and coconuts. Shamans would also burn incense and pray to the Tiger God. These ritual actions were believed to prevent the villagers from future attacks. In this chapter, I present that the Tiger God motif is depicted in Central Indian rock art. Although not widely known, such pictographs are particularly abundant, with many rock shelters located in remote jungle settings. Thus, this rock art is part of a legacy that represents a continuation of ancestral traditions relating to the veneration of the Tiger God. Keywords Baghan Deo · Baghaisur Baba · Baghaut Baba · Bagh Deo · Kinnasum · Tiger God · Animal Master · Shaman · Rock Art · India

M. Dubey-Pathak (✉) State Archaeology Department, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. J. Chacon (ed.), The History and Environmental Impacts of Hunting Deities, Conflict, Environment, and Social Complexity 4, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37503-3_5

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Introduction In India, some colors (vermilion, saffron, yellow) are considered particularly auspicious. Statues and carvings in jungle sanctuaries and trees or stones in forests are often marked with vermilion dots with the goal of propitiating supernatural beings. Images of all aspects of nature, humans, and animals cover the walls of temples found in remote jungle sanctuaries. Irrespective of religion, both color and art pervade Indian beliefs whenever the supernatural realm is involved. Over the last few years, I have spent many months conducting fieldwork in Central India (i.e., in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh). Although Central Indian rock art is particularly abundant, many shelters in remote jungles are not well-known. One of the most important aspects of this rock art is that its natural and cultural context has largely been preserved, a rare occurrence indeed. Thus, through rock art depictions, it is possible to study what happened to the local tribes and to uncover the profound meanings of ancestral traditions. The conversations and interviews conducted during fieldwork were filmed and recorded. These interactions were carried out in Hindi, a language spoken by tribal people in addition to their own tribal language. In most cases, a bond of mutual trust was established and my informants freely provided a wealth of unrestricted details about tribal beliefs and customs. I focused on three domains: the various aspects of tribal culture, traditional beliefs, and their understanding of the rock art from their respective areas. The exceptionally high-quality ethnographic data I collected stem from my interviews of several Central Indian tribes: the Gonds, Baigas, Korkus, Kols, and Bhils.

Belief in Baghan Deo/Baghaisur Baba Baghan Deo is an important animal master for the Gonds, Baigas, Korkus, and Kols. This supernatural being is often worshipped outside villages in order to protect cattle and humans from tiger attacks.

The Gonds and Baghaisur Baba The Gonds refer to the Tiger God as Baghaisur Baba. During my fieldwork in the Pachmarhi area, I recorded information from the Gonds from the villages of Pachmarhi, Madhai, and Bariaam about their special relationship with tigers and the Tiger God. Their Baghat (shaman) would summon a tiger by uttering certain chants. The belief that certain individuals possess special powers over such a powerful and dangerous animal in the jungle is still very much alive. At times, in the past, elders would meet outside the village and the shaman would call a tiger by

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Fig. 5.1 Belkhandar Bori. A man is depicted seemingly about to mount a tiger that is following two buffaloes

way of certain chants. When the tiger appeared, it would be offered chickens and coconuts. They would burn incense and pray to the Tiger God. This would ensure that their village would be safe from tiger attacks. “The Tiger God used to have a hut built for him in the wilderness that he might not come near their dwellings” (Forsyth 1975 [1889]:149). A 96-year-old Gond man from Pachmarhi was referred to as Chaitram Baghpaile Uekey, with the last two words being a title meaning “the family who controls tigers,” as he came from a family of Parihars (shamans) possessing those particular powers. This 96-year-old man told me that his father had the power to summon tigers by way of various chants. On the night after the Diwali festival, he would instruct his son to secure their cattle by tying them to posts. This was because a Bagh (tiger) would come when called. According to this informant, once the tiger appeared, the father would take the cattle and tiger into the jungle where they would all play together. Such a scene is found at the Bori rock art site (see Fig. 5.1). After this had transpired, the father would release the tiger back into the jungle while he and his cattle would safely return to their village. In the Gond village of Ghoghari, I was informed that the Tiger God is worshiped during the Diwali festival. In effect, the villagers left offerings at the entrance of their houses along with placing grains on the ground and a red rooster. If the rooster ate the grains, then and only then, would it be sacrificed because this demonstrated that the Tiger God had accepted their offering. Before killing the rooster, the villagers would pluck its crest and short feathers and offer these items as well.

A Gond shaman named Ballu Singh from Bariaam revealed that his father and uncle used to summon tigers; however, this is no longer done. During Diwali, the villagers would clean their houses and nearby areas. Then, they would plaster the floors with cow dung. Moreover, they would prepared plenty of food and place a 3–4-cm stone outside their houses. The shaman would then place a long vermilion tilak (mark or dot) on the middle of his forehead and thereafter proceed to call the

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Fig. 5.2 Belkhandar Bori. A man is depicted riding a tiger. Tales of individuals being capable of controlling are popular among the various forest tribes of Central India

tiger with particular chants. Within a few minutes, a tiger would appear near the village and start roaring. I was told that the shaman would then call this animal to his house by way of certain chants. Cooked food was placed outside the house, and the tiger would eat whatever it wanted while people watched him. Before the tiger’s arrival, they would prepare a madhai (i.e., a long bamboo stick adorned with peacock feathers arranged in the form of a small umbrella). According to the informants, the shaman would hold the madhai in his hand and climb onto the tiger’s back. The tiger would then carry the shaman in this manner all the way to the village of Matkuli located at a distance of ~5 km. The village of Matkuli is the location designated for the Diwali/Madhai festival where people from many tribes congregate on the day after Diwali. On this day, the Gwala (shepherd of the village) would perform a particular dance wearing a special outfit made with colorful threads over his normal attire. In one hand, he would hold a bamboo stick with bells attached to it, which he normally uses to stir cattle in the morning. According to the local tradition, after the shaman arrives mounted on the tiger, he dismisses his mount and the tiger returns to the jungle. A depiction of a shaman riding a tiger is found at the Bori rock art site (see Fig. 5.2). Nowadays, the villagers no longer summon tigers, but, once in a year, they still worship the Tiger Lord on the day after Diwali. This animal master is prayed to and offered a rooster so that no harm befalls their village. They leave these offerings in a particular place outside their homes. On the same day they make a large cake of cow dung (Godhan) and place a small iron rod near it.

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If a tiger kills a man, then all the tribes consider this to be an unnatural death. Among the Gonds, when a man is killed by a tiger, his body is burned and a bamboo image of a tiger is made and thrown outside the village. Only close relatives will touch the body of a man killed by a tiger and only because they are obligated to do so. None of the victim’s personal ornaments are removed from the corpse, and sometimes other ornaments once owned by the deceased are placed on the body. If this were not done, then it is believed that the tiger will return in order to kill some other person from that household. In some localities, anyone who touches the body of a man killed or even wounded by a tiger is temporarily polluted and has to be purified by an elaborate ceremony officiated by the Bhumka or village priest (Russell and Hiralal 1916 [1993]). “The soul of a man who has been eaten by a tiger must be specially propitiated, and ten or twelve days are occupied in bringing it back. To ascertain whether or not the soul has been retrieved, a thread is tied to a beam and a copper ring is suspended from it, being secured by a twisting tied with a knot. A pot full of water is placed below the ring. Songs are then sung (as offerings) while a watch is kept day and night. When the ring falls from the thread and drops into the water, the soul is said to have returned. If the ring delays in falling, they command the dead man’s soul to return. The ancestors are represented by small pebbles kept in a basket in the kitchen, which is considered the holiest part of the house, or maybe a price of copper coins tied up in a little bundle. They are daubed with vermilion and worshipped occasionally. A man who has been killed by a tiger or cobra may receive general veneration, with the object of appeasing his spirit, and become a village god” (Russell and Hiralal 1916 [1993]:95). In reference to the Gonds, Forsyth wrote: “The foundation of their creed appears to be a vague pantheism, in which all nature is looked upon as pervaded by spiritual powers, the most prominent and powerful of which are personified by simple offerings” (Forsyth 1975 [1889]:148). “None of these powers of nature are represented by idols, nor have any particular forms or ceremonies of worship. They are merely localised by some vague symbol; the mountain god by a daub of vermilion on some prominent rock; the tree god by a pile of stones thrown round the stem of a tree-and so on” (Forsyth 1975 [1889]:150).

The Baigas and Baghasur Baba The principal deity of the Baigas is named Bura Deo, who resides in the saja tree (Terminalia tomentosa) and is worshipped during the summer with an offering of goats, chickens, coconuts, and local liquor made from mahua flowers. Thakur Deo is the god of the land and boundaries, and he is worshipped with an offering of a white goat. Dharti Mata, or Mother Earth, is considered to be the wife of Thakur Deo. Bhimsen is the god of rainfall. Nag Deo, or cobra, is believed to live in an anthill, and offerings are left to him at such locations.

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Fig. 5.3 Umariya. A Bagheshwer Pat (Tiger God shrine) located in a remote section of a forest that is near a Baiga village

Bhaiyalal Bhumiya, an old Baiga man from a remote village of Umariya, told me that his village worships the Tiger God Baghasur Baba once a year. In this community, the villagers maintain a Bagheshwer Pat shrine with a small vertical stone representing the Tiger God (see Fig. 5.3). They offer this animal master mahua liquor along with a white spotted hen whose blood they sprinkle on the aforementioned stone. By doing so, devotees believe that they are protected and can go into the jungle day or night without any risk whatsoever. Forsyth (1975 [1889]) noticed that the Baigas are well-known for their hunting skills using no other weapon other than an axe. They hunt all types of game; however, they never eat bears or tigers. Oil is extracted from tiger fat and used for lighting lamps and massage therapy. In his book on the Baigas, Elwin (2007 [1939]) states that there is a special intimacy between the Baigas and all wild animals. Where wild animals are troublesome, a Bagheshwer Pat shrine may be built with a mud image of a tiger placed inside. Elwin provides a number of anecdotes about the Baigas’ relationship with tigers. For example, he was told that in the old days, a leader of the village of Dewar used to travel to another village in the company of a tiger. A Baiga told Elwin that when he was a boy, his mother used to place a pot full of leftover food from the evening meal behind the house for tigers and other animals to eat. In Dindori district, the informants spoke of a man named Dugru Baiga from

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the village of Barangi, who used to spend entire nights alone in the jungle. Three to four tigers would come and lick his hands and feet and would stroke the man with their paws. After some time, when he grew tired of these animals, the man would tell them to go away. The tigers returned to the jungle but always came back to him. Such individuals were shamans who were believed to have the power to control tigers. Elwin recorded some additional interesting information. For example, the celebrated Baiga hunter and shaman named Rawan told Elwin that once while alone, he had fallen asleep in a field. While sleeping, a tiger picked him up and began to carry him to its den. En route, the man suddenly woke up and, realizing that he was being carried off by a tiger, smacked the animal on its face. The tiger roared and ran away. On another occasion, Rawan was walking through the dense forest and encountered a tiger in the middle of the trail. They began to play with each other. The tiger kissed his privates and he did the same to the tiger. They were both enjoying themselves, but when the tiger scratched Rawan with his paw, he smacked it and the animal run away in the jungle. According to Rawan, his ability to control tigers through various chants was employed by the British before the Independence in 1947. He added that British officers used to seek his services when they would hunt big game. One day, a British man named Tom Sahib organized a large tiger hunt, but this effort was unsuccessful. After this failed attempt, Tom Sahab asked Rawan for assistance on a future hunt but Rawan said that he was not willing to participate. However, after imbibing a bottle of liquor supplied by the British, he agreed to participate in the hunt and thus accompanied the hunters into the jungle. There, Rawan instructed Tom Sahib to sit in a tree while he stood below and called the tigers by way of certain chants. Three tigers arrived all at once, and this frightened Tom Sahib to such an extent that he could not move a muscle. Later, one British officer killed some of these tigers. According to Rawan, “In my village no tiger has ever killed anyone since I have been there. I have one tiger, who is my adopted son. He always feeds me with Sāmbhar and chital, and I never let anyone kill him” (Rawan cited Elwin 2007 [1939]:147). Elwin (2007 [1939]: 352) wrote, “I was once going from Chauradadar to Karadih with Mahatu Baiga, and we came across a very large tiger sitting in the middle of the road. I was unarmed, and the tiger began to walk towards us. But Mahatu was not at all put out. He began to mutter some incantations, and just after a few minutes the tiger yawned lazily, and strolled away into the jungle and Mahatu claimed credit for the tiger’s departure.” The Baigas recite certain chants for binding the jungle, that is, for preventing predators from entering particular locations. If a tiger or leopard enters a field and kills men or bullocks, it means that the supernatural boundaries/defenses of the villages have been damaged and thus must be repaired. According to Elwin (2007 [1939]), in May of 1937, a leopard had killed many bullocks, and, so, a shaman named Dhansingh was called to repair the supernatural boundaries/defenses of the village with his magic. Dhansingh led all the villagers into the jungle near a tall tree where he made an offering of coconuts and some natural gum from the sarai tree and started walking like a tiger and crouching and growling around the tree. Then, he

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began chanting to keep all tigers away from this place and, in order to bind the jungle, he drove a nail into the same tall tree. The Baigas and Gonds conduct an extremely special ceremony called Mati Uthana, whenever someone is killed by a tiger. Although the villagers witness this ritual, they maintain a certain distance from the activities throughout the ceremony. To begin with, a Baiga shaman visits the location of the victim’s death. There, he fashions a small cone out of the bloodstained earth, which represents the deceased. The shaman then proceeds to act out the scene of the tiger killing a human being. First, he goes about on his hands and knees acting just like a tiger. Then, he attacks and “kills the victim” while holding the cone of bloodstained earth with his teeth. Thereafter, one of the villagers runs up and taps the shaman’s back with a small stick. This indicates that the tiger has now been rendered harmless. The shaman will immediately give the cone of bloodstained earth to a relative of the deceased who will place it on an anthill and also sacrifice a pig over it. The next day, a small chicken will be brought to the same location, and, after using red ochre to place a mark on its head, the chicken will be hurled into the forest and the shaman will shout, “take this and go home.” The Baigas believe that this ceremony allows the spirit of the deceased to rest and, at the same time, prevents the tiger from killing additional people. Similarly, Elwin (2007 [1939]) witnessed a complete Mati Uthana ceremony. In 1937, a tiger killed two people from the Baiga village of Bohi. The first victim was a 12-year-old boy who was the son of a man named Deriya and the sonin-law of a man named Jethu. This boy had gone with his brother to a field to pick wild mangoes. Upon arriving at the field, they separated and the boy began cutting small bamboo shoots as he walked through the area. A tiger leapt upon the boy and carried him away. The second victim was a Gond man who was working in a field with his daughter. At midday, the two were resting under a large tree. There, at some point, the man’s daughter departed to collect bamboo shoots. While she was placing the shoots under the sun to dry, a tiger attacked her father and dragged him away. The tiger consumed the man completely, except for one hand, a foot, and the skull. Man-eating tigers are depicted at the Bori rock art site (see Fig. 5.4) and at Kanji Ghat (see Fig. 5.5). For the Mati Uthana ceremony, about 200 villagers from both victims’ families gathered at the location of the tragedy. They sat under the tree, where the tiger’s claw marks could still be clearly seen. The head of the village pointed out these claw marks to everyone, which shed light on the extent of the victim’s struggle. The victim’s belongings, an axe, a tobacco pouch, and clothing, were lying where they had been left. The villagers requested that the aforementioned Baiga shaman named Rawan conduct the Mati Uthana ceremony, but he could not, and, so, they deliberated for a long time. The Gonds were reserved, but the Baiga were shouting and insisting that a Mati Uthana ceremony be conducted. Finally, all parties decided that the head of the village should pray to Thakur Deo, the god of land and boundaries, for guidance in selecting the best person to conduct the Mati Uthana ceremony. It was decided that the previously mentioned Jethu, from the village of Bohi, should conduct the Mati Uthana ceremony. Therefore, Jethu began with a small ritual in the name of all the deities. This particular ritual consisted of offering some

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Fig. 5.4 Belkandhar Bori. A man-eating tiger is shown with a human head surrounded by two circles while an archer appears below

Fig. 5.5 Kanji Ghat. The first tiger, towards the right, is shown in the act of eating a human being while the second tiger, towards the left, is shown having consumed most of the victim’s body

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sarai tree gum and a little kodai (a type of small grain). Jethu recited the myth of Nanga Baiga and Nanga Baigin (Baiga god and goddess, respectively) who had driven nails into the earth to become the lords of all wild animals. Jethu mentioned the first time this rite had ever been performed. That was when Nanga Baiga was called in to repair the damaged supernatural boundaries/defenses of a village and to bind the mouth of a tiger. After this had transpired, a man beat the ground with his axe and cried, “Get up, stand up!” Jethu proceeded to make a small cone out of mud to represent a man and set it on the ground. He then fed some kodai to the two sons of a shaman named Dewar, and although they waited for some time, no tiger appeared. So, they left the place and joined the crowd. Then, the spirit of the Tiger God descended upon the head of Deriya, the father of the 12-year-old boy who had been killed. In other words, Deriya was possessed by the Tiger God’s spirit. In a bent posture, Deriya began roaring and, with his long hair hanging over his eyes, running swiftly all around the field, wherever the tiger had trodden. He suddenly turned toward the hill and fled into the jungle. Many villagers chased after him and drove him back to the village. Then, Deriya started roaring again and began jumping on the ground in front of the people, but he could not take hold of the little mud cone representing a man because a shaman had supernaturally bound him. Deriya shouted that “I have eaten one, I will eat another one.” Upon hearing this, Jethu quickly made an additional mud cone. Deriya jumped, once again ran to the forest, and then returned and rushed toward the small mud cones and placed them in his mouth. However, the villagers did not allow him to eat the cones, removed them from his mouth, and then washed his mouth with bitter water and liquor. Jethu put the mud cone images in a small gourd, buried them, and placed a large stone over them. Then, Deriya ran to one of the sons of the shaman Dewar, who, in turn, took a chicken and threw it toward Deriya. The first time this took place, a man caught the chicken and Deriya turned on him with such a ferocious snarl that the man ran away and hid in the village. The second time the chicken was thrown, Deriya caught the chicken and tore off its neck. Then, Deriya fled into the forest where he drank its blood and was chased by many villagers. They held him, and he threw the chicken away. Thereafter, Dewar’s son picked up the chicken and buried it with the mud cones. After that, he dragged Deriya about half a mile to a rock from where one could see the whole valley. At this location, Jethu drove a nail into the rock and began chanting very loudly in order to stop the tiger. The tiger appeared but returned to the jungle as he could no longer do any harm. The Baigas believe that supernaturally closing or binding a tiger’s jaws by driving a nail into a tree can prevent it from attacking anyone. The forest reserve of Mandla has been known for its man-eating tigers. At a particularly dangerous location in the forest, a Baiga shaman drove a nail into the trunk of a large tree at some height from the ground, believing that this nail will ritually bind the mouth of man-eating tigers in the area, thus preventing them from killing and/or eating anyone in the future. The Baiga villagers point to the many claw marks visible on a certain tree trunk where, reportedly, a tiger had tried to climb in an attempt to pull out the nail in order to regain its man-eating power (Russell and Hiralal 1916 [1993]). The Baigas believe

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that the soul of a person killed by a tiger will reside on the head of that tiger and that this situation will spur further attacks unless certain rituals are conducted (Forsyth 1975 [1889]).

The Korkus and Bagh Deo/Baghan Deo An old Korku man named Amru and his wife Laksmi from the village of Pachmarhi were my jungle guides during the course of my doctoral fieldwork, which was conducted in the dense forests of the Pachmarhi Hills from the late eighties to the early nineties. Amru shared many stories about the Korkus’ belief in Baghan Deo. For example, if a tiger appeared in or near a village, a local priest would pray and make an offering to the Tiger God, promising to repeat the same ritual for a specified number of days on the condition that the tiger will not return to the area. According to the Korkus, a tiger is an honorable beast who always remains true to its promise. To this day, every year during the Hareli Jhot Amavas festival, they offer chickens to Baghan Deo. With these actions, the villagers strongly believe that they and their cattle are protected from tiger attacks. Regarding the Korkus, Forsyth (1975 [1889]:154) states that “the powers of nature are equally adored, such as the Tiger God, the Bison God, the Hill God, the Deities of Small-Pox and Cholera. But these are all secondary to the Sun and Moon, which. . .are the principal objects of adoration.” For example, if a tiger kills a man or cattle, then the local priest will try to uncover the reason why this happened. If it is determined that a man had made a mistake when conducting a ritual and thus had failed to properly worship Bagh Deo, then the local priest will perform a ritual and will sacrifice a chicken or goat in order to appease this animal master. Another Korku man named Malthu told me that whenever a tiger became a man-eater, the villagers had no choice but to kill it. When this situation developed, all of the village elders would gather in order to coordinate the killing of the tiger in question. Once a date and location are set, the villagers would tie a cow in the tiger’s home range in order lure the man-eater to the designated location. However, this cow was believed to be safe from harm because it had received supernatural protection by way of various chants. At this point, the villagers would hide in a tree hut constructed nearby. This structure was built at a height that prevented the tiger from jumping and attacking the villagers. When the tiger approached the cow, it would roar but it would not touch the animal because of the aforementioned supernatural protection it had received. Out of frustration, the tiger would roar, jump, and circle the cow many times. Sometimes, it would urinate and use its tail to kick up dust in order to blind the cow. At this stage, the villagers would shoot the tiger. Today, the killing of tigers is forbidden by law. The Korkus believed that each and every part of a tiger’s body was precious. Whenever a tiger was killed, the Korkus and Gonds singed the animal’s whiskers and pulled out its molars. These actions were believed to prevent the tiger’s spirit from hunting them in the future. Village priests and shamans always tried to secure

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and preserve the tiger’s shoulders because they were believed to possess the strength of 12 young buffaloes. During a moonless night, during Diwali, these ritual specialists fashion protective amulets out of a tiger’s shoulder. Even tiger scat is highly valued by shamans, who burn this material in order to deliver someone suffering from sorcery. Tiger fat is believed to be a highly effective medicine for the treatment of rheumatism and sprains. The tongue of a tiger is considered to be a powerful tonic for weak children (Russell and Hiralal 1916 [1993]).

The Kols and Baghaut Baba The Kols revere the tiger as Baghaut Baba. According to this tribe, they need not fear a tiger unless they have neglected to make their offerings to this animal master. The Kols never participate in drives to hunt tigers. According to the informants, if anyone encounters a tiger in the forest, that person should address the animal very respectfully. Looking upon a dead tiger will bring bad luck, as the animal’s spirit will harm the observer. A 75-year-old Kol man named Raja, from Jhiri village of the Sidhi district, told me that in his lifetime he had never seen a tiger kill any human being. In his village, everyone maintained a small sanctuary with many small mud cones representing different supernatural beings, including Baghaut Baba. To date, these villagers consistently make offerings of goats, pigs, and/or chickens to the Tiger God during the Holi and Navratri festivals. According to Kol myths, close ties have always existed between tigers and the Kols and the following myth illustrates this belief: A Kol woman gave birth to a son in the jungle and, since it was difficult to take care of the infant, she left her baby boy in the jungle. Upon seeing the helpless infant, a tiger that was roaming the forest brought him to his den and looked after the baby. The boy, named Binjhwar, grew and lived in the dense forest with the tiger. The boy turned out to be an excellent hunter and brought food for the tiger every day. When Binjhwar was old enough, the tiger decided that it was time for the young man to marry and so wanted to obtain a wife for Binjhwar. One day, the tiger saw a king’s wedding party with his future bride, traveling through the jungle. The tiger frightened the wedding party so badly that they dropped the litter carrying the future bride and ran away as fast as they could. The tiger brought the young woman to Binjhwar, and gave her to him to be his wife. The new couple departed from the jungle because the tiger wanted them to lead a new life with their own people. They went to and set up residence among the Sheori because the young man’s mother belonged to this group. The offspring of this couple became the Binj Kols (Griffiths 1946). Today, however, tigers and Kols have each separated and gone their own ways. Nonetheless, the Kols believe that they should never hunt a tiger nor should they participate in any drives to hunt them. During the Holi festival, they offer a chicken to the Tiger God Bagh Deo. If they fail to make this offering, they believe that a tiger will attack, kill, and eat a male family member as punishment. According to the Kol informants, a tiger will never attack a woman or a girl. They can go to the jungle to

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collect wood without the fear of being killed. The Kols also believe that certain tiger body parts (i.e., whiskers, teeth, and claws) possess extremely powerful magical properties.

The Saoras and Kinnasum Among the Saoras from the state of Orissa, the Tiger God is known as Kinnasum. When a tiger kills a man, after his memorial stone (menhir) is erected in a special ceremony known as the Guar rite, his soul turns into a Kinnasum (Tiger God) and goes to live in an anthill. Tigers are associated with anthills everywhere. Therefore, when a tiger kills a man, the soul of the deceased is believed to situate itself in an anthill, and this is why mourners sacrifice a rooster at such sites. It is said that when the Tiger God supernaturally attacks a man, the victim feels as if he was being chewed by an actual tiger and sometimes as if white ants were biting him. “Kinnasum’s attack is virulent. You will feel as were being pierced by thorns, and your body aches as from a good flogging” (Elwin 1955:111). According to Elwin, for the Saoras, being eaten by a tiger is a serious matter. The victim’s spirit travels to the underworld in the form of a tiger. When the Saoras succeed in killing the tiger that ate the human being, they cremate the carcass with castor wood and perform a specific part of the Guar rite. With this, the soul of the victim becomes an ancestor. Then, the victim appears to his family in a dream and asks them to perform a full and proper ceremony for him because he has been accepted into the underworld. “The ghost [soul] becomes Kinnasum, the tiger god, and it is in the form of a tiger that he usually visits the earth. He is very dangerous, especially in the early stage before he has been hunted down and killed by the other dead, and often inspires the same tiger who killed other people too” (Elwin 1955:397–398). Elwin reports that such rituals took place in 1944 after a man was killed by a tiger. First of all, after finding the victim’s body in the forest, the corpse was carefully inspected by the head of the village, village elders, and by the family members of the deceased. They then cremated the body on the spot. During the ceremony, the mourners remained silent. When the funeral was completed, the mourners bathed and washed their clothes. During such a ritual, while the funeral pyre is still burning, the shaman tries to uncover the underlying reason for the tragedy. It is believed that wild animals never act on their own. They only act when some ritually powerful person directs them to do so. Therefore, it is important to discover who was responsible for the killing, and shamans employ a special method to find the answer. First, the shaman holds a terracotta pot to his mouth and roars into it. The resonating sound emanating from the pot sounds very much like a roaring tiger, and the shaman requests that the tiger identify the responsible party. He takes the name of the Tiger God and roars. If a sound emanates from the jungle, then it is assumed that this Tiger God had made the sound that was heard. If there is no reply, then the shaman takes on another name and

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roars again. The shaman goes on to take on the name of various gods and even the names of the dead, especially that of those who have been killed by tigers. The names of any possible sorcerers are also called out. If after repeated attempts, no sound is heard from the jungle, then the shaman will call on the tiger and ask the following: “Are you a real tiger or were you created specifically for this deed? Were you actually born a tiger? Are you a man changed into a tiger? You gods who gave us birth come and tell us the truth.” Then, villagers perform a continuation of the Guar rite that involves sacrificing a pig on an anthill. Anthills are always associated with Kinnasum and tigers. At this juncture, the shaman mixes pig’s blood with palm wine and sprinkles it all over the place in order to drive the tiger back into the forest. All the meat from the sacrificial offering must be eaten on the spot. Nothing can be taken back to the village. A small memorial stone is erected near the anthill. When the relatives of the deceased experience certain dreams, they are convinced that the soul of the victim has become a revered ancestor and they will proceed to complete the Guar rite. After several days, the widow of the victim will have a pig sacrificed in her house and the shaman will go out and drive a nail into a tree located at the village periphery in order to supernaturally bind the tiger’s mouth and to prevent the soul from returning. A strict rule of quarantine is enacted whenever a tiger-related tragedy happens. When a killing takes place, none of the local inhabitants are allowed to leave the village nor are visitors allowed to enter the community. In 1943, a tiger killed a woman and the relatives from her natal community were not allowed to enter the village. In this particular instance, the shaman supernaturally protected the village in the following manner. After sacrificing a pig in the early morning, instead of driving a nail into a tree, he took a bow and shot an arrow into the trunk with all his might. The arrow needed to penetrate deep enough so that no tiger could pull it out. By doing so, the villagers believe that if the tiger comes into contact with this supernaturally protected boundary/defense, it will become blind (Elwin 1955). These sorts of beliefs and practices are still very much alive among the tribes of Central India (see Fig. 5.6). On the night of Diwali, the Korku, Gond, Ahir or Gwala, and Kahar or Kevat caste people prepare kichadi (rice mixed with vegetables) for the cattle and then individually feed it to their animals. According to an old Gond shaman, after feeding kichadi to the cattle and worshipping them, they collect cow milk and urine, mix these together, and sprinkle this mixture onto everyone, including the shaman, as a type of “holy water” to all present. This ritual also serves to purify the physical location of the ceremony. After this is done, all sing and dance with musical instruments called Dholak and Timki, kinds of drums, which are beaten with special drum sticks (Choura). Then, the shaman drinks this “holy water” before and after entering into a trance. He then utters certain chants for the good health and safety of the cattle. On the same night, all present also venerate the Tiger God Baghan Deo so that their cattle will not be harmed.

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Fig. 5.6 Dindhori. Baigas in the act of worshipping the Baghesur Baba (Tiger God) at a shrine

Tigers in Rock Art In Central Indian rock art, tigers are usually depicted by themselves. However, on some rock art panels, tigers are shown hunting prey or, in some instances, appear fighting one another or killing a man. Only rarely are man-eaters shown. Sometimes a tiger is drawn with a striped heavy body with its mouth open, whereas leopards are painted with spots on their body. Only rarely do lions appear in Indian rock art. Mathpal (1984) recorded three images of lions at the Bhimbetka site. More lion images have been reported from the Pachmarhi, Raisen, and Sagar areas. Lion images are often difficult to recognize. However, the presence of a mane clearly indicates that the image in question is that of a lion, whereas the presence of stripes is associated with tigers. Many palaeogeographers believe that the tiger is a latecomer to India. According to Dunbar Brander (1991), tigers originated in northeastern Asia and, due to climate

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Fig. 5.7 Dhabuaghat 4. Several tigers are depicted while a woman, perhaps lying on the ground, appears below. Enhanced with DStretch

change, migrated to other parts of Asia. In the past, Siberia was likely populated by vast herds of large oxen that were preyed upon by tigers, as this would explain how and why tigers evolved the way they did. Whether the disappearance of the tigers’ main prey item in Siberia was due to disease, climate fluctuations, changes in water levels, or some combination thereof, we cannot say with any certainty. Irrespective of the reason, the disappearance of these vast herds of prey spurred tigers to migrate to other parts of Asia (Dunbar Brander 1991:47). Very few depictions of tigers can be seen in Mesolithic (10,000 BP) rock art panels. However, images of tigers are more common in later periods. A few scenes show tigers in their attack modes. For example, at the Hathitol site at Raisen, a tiger is depicted as chasing an early-style, S-shaped human rendered in dark red, whereas, at the Kathotiya site, six hunters with long barbed spears are shown hunting a tiger. Additionally, at the Firangi site at Raisen, a tiger is depicted as chasing a man who is running while a second man is holding the tiger’s tail. Another early period image, with red intricate body patterns, is reported from the Sagar area. At Dabuaghat in Sagar, one shelter contains many images of tigers and leopards. In one scene, more than four tigers are shown running while a woman is shown directly below them (perhaps lying on the ground) (see Fig. 5.7). In another scene, two large tigers are depicted as fighting and, next to them, two other tigers, smaller in size, appear to be fighting or playing! In an interesting scene at the Chibber Nala site, a tiger is shown mauling a running man while an archer faces the animal with his bow. At the Talpura site of Budni, a tiger is depicted in its attack mode with deer fleeing from the predator. While stalking prey, tigers move slowly then stop and wait. At the Raisen site of Richhan Kho, a tiger is depicted in dark red with thick stripes on his body and his open mouth is superimposed over an earlier image. I have seen more than 30 images of tigers at Pachmarhi rock art sites, which are located in Satpura National Park and in the Bori Sanctuary. Local tribal peoples have shared many stories about the relationship between tigers and shamans, and some of

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Fig. 5.8 Belkandhar Bori. An isolated tiger appears in white and off-white paint with large whiskers and claws

these stories appear to be depicted in the local rock art of this area. For example, at the Belkandar Bori site, a man drawn in white appears to be ready to ride a tiger that is following two buffaloes (see Fig. 5.1). Additionally, at the same site, a man seems to be sitting on the back of a tiger that is following a warrior with a sword and shield while another man is shown without arms (see Fig. 5.2). At the same site, in two different places, a solitary tiger is painted in white and off-white with large whiskers and claws (see Fig. 5.8) and another isolated big cat, highly similar to a lion, also appears. These images could represent deified or ceremonial animals. Moreover, at the same location, another scene in white shows a tiger and its kill (see Fig. 5.4). This rock art panel shows a long and thin tiger with a human head surrounded by two circles while an archer appears below. Interestingly, at this large rock shelter, most of the tigers have been depicted in white and are drawn in the same style. At the Belkhandar 2 site, two large tigers with well-decorated bodies are depicted as following each other (see Fig. 5.9). They are represented in two colors, namely, red and off-white. Two off-white crabs also appear near the first tiger. In Indian tribal societies, crabs and fish are frequently used in rituals. At the site of Sadari, an isolated dancing man is depicted with the tail, head, and claws of a tiger (see Fig. 5.10). At the site of Baba Garden in Badkachhar, another dancing man is shown wearing a tiger outlet with a long tail. Both men are shown in upright positions.

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Fig. 5.9 Belkhandar 2. Two decorated tigers are shown following each other while two crabs appear near them Fig. 5.10 Sadari. A dancing man wearing tiger attire with a long tail is depicted in this rock art panel

At the Swem Aam site in Badkachhar, a lone tiger is depicted with gigantic proportions, the body decorated with red thin stripes, and an open mouth. Unfortunately, due to weathering, this depiction has not been preserved very well. This image used to be venerated by local villagers. Three more tigers, including a cub in

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white followed by a small man, also appear on the same panel. At the Kharilane site in Badkachhar, three tigers are drawn in light yellow. At the Dropadi Khudd site, a masked man or shaman with a long tail is shown holding an object in one hand and is apparently touching the mouth of a tiger with the other hand while the animal follows him. At the Kanji Ghat site, a man-eating tiger is apparently depicted in two stages: in the first stage, on the left, a tiger is shown attacking a man, and, in the second stage, on the right, the tiger appears standing and only one of the man’s legs remains next to the animal’s mouth. Additionally, nearby, two more tigers are shown painted in white (see Fig. 5.5). Depictions of tiger hunts are uncommon in Indian rock art. When they do appear, it usually features attempts at stopping tiger attacks. There are several examples of this at the Pachmarhi site. At the Churna shelter, an archer and a tiger are depicted facing each other: the tiger is drawn in a ferocious-looking attack mode, whereas the man is shooting an arrow at the animal. At the same large rock shelter, a leopard and her cubs are also shown. At the Bhurbhuri Lane site, a yellow and red tiger along with a cub are depicted following a man on a horse. At the Parewa Pahari site in Neemghan, an archer is shown shooting an arrow at a young and not very large tiger with red stripes. Both figures are painted in red and yellow and are facing each other very closely. At the Rajat Prapat site, a tiger is shown attacking a man who appears to face the animal with an axe. At the site of Nishangarh, an archer is shown aiming his bow and arrow toward an attacking tiger. A few more images of attacking tigers can be seen at the sites of Maradeo, Sadri, Bori, Tapka Pani, Madhai, and Astachal.

Discussion Interestingly, the hunting of various types of wild game is commonly featured in Central Indian rock art with the surprising exception of the hunting of tigers. The mighty tiger was not only considered to be the king of the jungle but was also greatly feared by the local tribal peoples. Tigers do appear extensively in Central Indian rock art; however, most tiger images appear to be associated with ritual contexts. Tigers are popular in Indian folklore, and certain tribes in India often associate themselves with tigers. Some of the tribes of Central India have clans named after the tiger with whom they may have a deep totemic relationship. According to Russell and Hiralal (1916), tribes such as the Binjawar, Bhatia, Kawar, Kharia, Kol, Korku, Mowar, Rautia, and Saora have clans associated with tigers. The Rautias, for example, are said to discard their clay pots upon hearing of the death of a tiger. In the Mandla and Patan areas, Gonds from the Kushram clan sacrifice pigs every 3 years to the Tiger God Baghasur Babba and, before a wedding, celebrants must offer a pig to him. Clan members never kill tigers. Among the Muria Gonds of the Baster region, the Sodi clan is considered as being the Baghwana or tiger people. Baghel Rajput clan members claim “descent from a royal tiger and clan members protect the species whenever they can” (Forsyth 1975 [1889]:294).

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Fig. 5.11 (a) Satna. A lion shrine located outside a village. (b) Bandhavgarh. A life-size statue of a Tiger God which is located next to the owner’s house near a road

The worship of the Tiger God Baghan Deo is largely confined to jungle areas, with much of the veneration being more protective in nature than totemistic. Living in the jungle has always been a challenge for forest people. Therefore, their attitude toward tigers not only has totemic origins but may also be influenced by fear. Ritual forms of worship developed around the various deities and natural powers as well as the traditional practice of emitting tribal chants or mantras. The Gonds and Kols of the Umariya and Satna districts continue to revere tigers. Small and life-sized statues of tigers and lions are sometimes placed outside villages or next to houses near roads where they are worshipped every day (see Figs. 5.11a, b). I was informed that before the establishment of a particular village, there used to be a tiger trail at the present location of that particular village. Village founders prayed to the Tiger God Bagheshwar Babba requesting that local tigers change their route, and they set up a small sanctuary dedicated to this animal master as part of this petition. Eventually, their prayers were answered as local tigers switched their

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Fig. 5.11 (continued)

regular routes. Subsequently, a larger sanctuary would be built at the location to house a large statue of the Tiger God. To this very day, the local forest people maintain this tradition of venerating the Tiger God. Why has the Tiger God occupied such an important place in the belief system of Central Indian forest tribes for so long? There are multiple answers to this question. First of all, as previously mentioned, the Tiger God is the clan god of certain tribes and tribal peoples and tigers are always respectfully referred to Bhaghesur Babba (Baba or Babba means grandfather). Additionally, villagers have good reason to both fear and respect this animal because of the tiger’s great strength, graceful walk, and mighty roar. Another interesting aspect is how certain shamans claim to be able to control tigers by way of various chants. After gaining control over the animal, reportedly, shamans enjoy playing with it. They neither wish to kill nor sacrifice this animal to some god as would be the case with many other types of wildlife. Moreover, as previously reported, certain Central Indian forest tribes believe that “Tiger is our Babba (grandfather).” They go on to say that “Babba has been worshipped by our fathers, grandfathers and even forefathers, so we are doing the same. That way, it is not going to harm us!”

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Fig. 5.12 Gond men dancing while wearing tiger masks and attire during the last day of the Navratri Festival held during the month of October

I have also noticed the impact of the Hindu culture upon the forest tribes. I witnessed certain tribal ceremonies where the villagers worship the Hindu Goddess Kali/Durga who rides a tiger. The Gonds, Korkus, and Kols have adopted and now celebrate certain great Hindu festivals in their own particular way. Navratri is a 9-day festival that is conducted for Goddess Kali/Durga. This event takes place in April and October of every year. Throughout the festival, and especially during the last 3 days, villagers perform dances sometimes wearing animal masks and costumes, particularly that of tigers (see Fig. 5.12). Their bodies are painted in yellow and black stripes, and they sport long tails. Members of the Kol tribe put on masks of the Goddess Kali and dance with swords. On these highly emotional occasions, some celebrants enter into a trance. Some devotees become frenetic and begin rolling on the ground, screaming and trembling all over, with their bodies shaking in a most impressive manner. Shamans or priests may even pierce their cheeks with iron rods (without drawing blood). In such manners are Hindu traditions embraced and transformed!

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Conclusions This work has documented the syncretic mixture of local tribal rituals (the cult of the Tiger God) and certain Hindu beliefs along with documenting the special relationship between tigers and the tribal peoples of Central India. Only individuals who currently (or formerly) live in forested areas continue to venerate this animal master. (see Fig. 5.4) In the state of Chhattisgarh, sanctuaries and temples devoted to local gods and goddesses are built next to rock art sites where terracotta animals are offered during the Diwali festival. These terracotta animals are fashioned in the form of bulls, elephants, horses, and, of course, tigers. These offerings are made in response to petitions that were granted and thus they are made as gestures of gratefulness. Unfortunately, tiger populations began declining as tiger hunting became a popular sport for colonials during the British era in India. After Independence, some local rulers continued the practice of killing tigers until the Indian Government enacted strict rules to protect this species. In turn, many forested areas have been converted into tiger reserves with entire tribal populations being relocated from their jungle villages to settlements away from their traditional homelands. As part of an ongoing effort to preserve the jungle and its wildlife, it is highly likely that the trend of removing tribal villagers from newly created nature preserves will continue. With these actions, we can rest assured in the knowledge that the Tiger God Baghan Deo will live on not only in those protected areas but also in the shrines and folklore of Central India’s forest peoples.

References Dubey-Pathak, M. 2013. The Rock Art of Pachmarhi Biosphere. New Delhi: BRC Publishers. Dubey-Pathak, M., and J. Clottes. 2017. Powerful Paintings. Rock Art and Tribal Art in Chhattisgarh. New Delhi: Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt. Ltd. ———. 2021. Madhya Pradesh Rock Art and Tribal Art. Delhi: INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage) & Aryans. ———. 2023. Time and Meaning, Indian Rock Art From Early to Modern Times. New Delhi: Pathak Publisher and Distributors. Dunbar Brander, A.A. 1991. Wild Animals in Central India. Dehradun: Natraj publishers. Elwin, V. 1951. The Tribal Art of Middle India. Bombay: A Personal Record. Oxford University Press. ———. 1955. The Religion of an Indian Tribe. Bombay: Oxford University Press. ———. 2007. The Baiga. New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House. Reprint (first published in 1939). Forsyth, J. 1975. [1889]. The Highlands of Central India. Asian Publication Services. New Delhi. Griffiths, G.W. 1946. The Kol Tribes of Central India. Calcutta: The Royal Society of Bengal. Mathpal, Y. 1984. Prehistoric Rock Paintings of Bhimbetka. New-Delhi: Abhinav Publications, Delhi. Russell, R.V., and Hira Lal, R.B. 1916. The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India. Vol. II. 7 III. London, McMillan and Co. Ltd. Reprinted in 1993: New Delhi, Madras, Asian Educational Services.

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Dr. Meenakshi Dubey-Pathak is a Wakankar Senior Research Fellow in the State Archaeology Department, Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal, India. She is an expert member of ICOMOS and UNESCO. She has conducted archaeological surveys throughout Central and Northern India, France, Spain, Italy, and China. She has also conducted ethnographic fieldwork among the tribal populations of Central India. Her research interests include the discovery, recording, and protection of Indian rock art along with the study of tribal customs, beliefs, and syncretism.

Chapter 6

A Spirit-Ruled Landscape: Ecology, Cosmology, and Change Among Katuic Upland Groups in the Central Annamites of Laos Nikolas Århem

Abstract This chapter examines the cultural and ecological significance of the institution of spirit forests among the Indigenous upland groups of the Central Annamitic Cordillera. The data were collected from two villages inhabited by Katuic-speaking shifting cultivators of the Sekong province of Laos. Spirit forests are demarcated areas in the forest that are believed to be inhabited and controlled by powerful spirits. Each spirit area is marked by cosmologically motivated taboos relating to human use. Burning and clearing forest for cultivation is categorically forbidden in such areas, accounting for the fact that most spirit areas consist of old-growth forest of high biodiversity. Any village territory tends to have a number of spirit forests, which are locally regarded as an integral part of the rotational swidden cultivation system. These spirit areas are believed to be the sources of life and fertility in the forest, allowing swidden fields to yield plentiful harvests and fallows to regenerate new forest. The Central Annamite forest landscape counts as one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. My general argument in this chapter is that the traditional Katuic way of managing their forests has significantly contributed to the high biodiversity and long-term viability of this landscape. Yet, today, the Indigenous populations are being increasingly excluded from their traditional forest lands, or precluded from using them, by state forest laws and development policies, industrial forestry projects, or exclusionary conservation projects. As a result, Indigenous lifeways and livelihoods are under threat and their sustainable forest management practices are in the process of collapsing. Keywords Indigenous forest management · Southeast Asia · Laos · Central Annamites · Katuic peoples · Sacred forests · Spirit beliefs · Biodiversity · Conservation · Development

N. Århem (✉) Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. J. Chacon (ed.), The History and Environmental Impacts of Hunting Deities, Conflict, Environment, and Social Complexity 4, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37503-3_6

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The principal theme of this chapter is the meaning and function of “spirit areas” in the context of Katuic cosmology and what I call their village forest ecosystem.1 The Katuic-speaking group belongs to the Mon-Khmer language family comprised of the Katu (Kantu), Bru, Taoi, and several smaller groups on both flanks of the Annamite mountain chain that marks the border between Laos and Vietnam. On the basis of fieldwork conducted in the Annamitic region of Laos (in the Kaleum district of the Sekong province), in the following, I provide a detailed account of the landscape as perceived by the Indigenous upland peoples that inhabit the region. This area is by any standard not only one of the most remote regions in Laos but also one of the areas deemed to have the highest intact biodiversity values in the entire Annamitic range (World Bank 2020). It will become apparent that the Katuic peoples inhabiting the region perceive their landscape in a highly similar manner and that all the Katuic villages I visited claimed, as part of their respective territories, surprisingly large forest areas that were categorized as “spirit areas”—areas inhabited and ruled by local spirits—in which human activities were strongly circumscribed by tradition. I argue that the traditional Katuic way of managing their forests has significantly contributed to the high biodiversity values and long-term viability of the Central Annamitic forest landscape. At the same time, as will become clear in the course of this chapter, there is presently a low-key “struggle” over the control and management of this landscape—a clash between extremely different modes of perceiving and managing the forest and its resources. On one side are the state and the timberharvesting industry along with international conservation and forestry nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that are all in collusion to commercially exploit the forest. On the other side are the local Indigenous populations that have derived their livelihood—at least until very recently—from the forest mainly by means of small-scale rotational shifting cultivation and subsistence hunting and fishing. My assertion is that the Indigenous peoples of the region, with their sustainable forest practices, which have allowed them to inhabit a biologically diverse habitat, are losing control over the forests that they have successfully managed for centuries—perhaps millennia. Moreover, they are losing control over their very lives and lifeways—all in the name of development and modern nature conservation.

Background: The Sustainable Forestry for Rural Development (SUFORD) Project After having carried out several extensive periods of fieldwork among the Katu—the major Katuic-speaking group in Vietnam—between 2004 and 2009, I had the opportunity to work as a traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) advisor for 3 months for a forestry development project entitled “SUFORD” (Sustainable 1

Portions of this chapter were published in Århem (2015).

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Forestry for Rural Development) in Laos.2 This project—henceforth referred to as the SUFORD project or simply the Project—was carried out in selected areas of every province in the country.3 Fieldwork for the Project was thus carried out in the Sekong, Attapeu, Bolikhamxay, Xayabouri, and Vientiane provinces at the end of 2009 and during early 2010. Here, I will focus on the results of the fieldwork carried out for the Project at the Kaleum district in the Sekong province, a region inhabited by several Katuic (and closely related) Mon-Khmer-speaking upland groups. The villages visited in Sekong were primarily inhabited by Nge-Kriang, Katu, and the Chetonng groups (all speaking closely related Katuic languages). Due to spatial constraints, I will present and analyze data from two villages—Loy and Tang Plang—inhabited by the Nge-Kriang people. An essential methodological tool used during this fieldwork was a specific version of what is sometimes called “community-based mapping,” which I combined with “forest walking” (described below). The point of this methodology was to combine the elements of an “etic,” cartographic, and supposedly objective view of the landscape with the “emic,” animistic perspective of the local Indigenous population. The result was a kind of hybrid mapping, which located socially and spiritually significant places and activities in the physical landscape. By sometimes using preprinted maps of the village areas indicating the locations of streams but otherwise entirely blank, we established points of reference that were not only relevant to the villagers but also could be used to make the types of “ecological” arguments that I will advance below. In several of the villages we visited, we used the Global Positioning System (GPS) to corroborate our trajectories during the aforementioned forest walks. I visited a total of seven villages in Sekong, but I will focus on the two Nge-Kriang villages of Loy and Tang Plang in order to provide a detailed account of the villagers’ understanding of the local landscape. The aforementioned forest walks were primarily directed toward areas, which the inhabitants of the villages referred to as “spirit areas.” The Sekong communities discussed here largely depended on rotational shifting cultivation of upland rice (and to a lesser degree on other crops) and were only marginally involved in the cash economy. From the point of view of the state and the Project, these remote communities in the southern part of Laos were less developed than were the northern Project villages, which essentially meant that they were significantly less involved in the cash economy (cf. Århem and Binh 2007). Of course, it was precisely for this reason that the southern Indigenous groups—such as the Katuic peoples—were particularly relevant for a traditional ecological

The project was a multilateral cooperation between the Government of Laos (hereafter “GOL”), Finnida (Finnish International Development Agency), and the World Bank. 3 During its first phase (2004–2008), the Project included 8 PFAs (production forest areas) covering an area of 656,000 ha, encompassing 412 project villages. The new PFAs included in the Project during the second stage (SUFORD AF) represented an additional 626,709 ha of forest and 329 villages (in 16 districts). These new villages comprised a population of about 150,000 people (SUFORD SIA: 11). As stated previously, I entered the Project as a TEK advisor during this second phase. 2

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knowledge (TEK) study, since such knowledge can arguably be most productively studied among Indigenous groups whose lifestyles have not yet been entirely transformed by “high modernist” development policies (Scott 1998). The mapping exercise—and the way the resulting “participatory” maps differed from the “official” mapping of the landscape and its use—provided clear evidence that there was indeed a “clash of perspectives” between the instrumental rationality of a modern forestry project (such as the SUFORD project) and the “moral ecology” informing Indigenous forest management. In this chapter, however, there is not sufficient space to profoundly analyze this clash. Instead, I will focus on the cultural rationality underlying the Indigenous way of perceiving and conceptualizing the village landscape. My task as a project consultant was to understand and to report on the Indigenous ecological knowledge (TEK), which, as I broadly understand, was experience-based, intimate knowledge of the local environment, often encoded and metaphysically grounded in religious beliefs and practices (cf., Berkes 2008; Scott 1998). To understand the broader context in which the Project—and I as a project consultant—operated, a few words need to be said about the social and environmental changes taking place in the study communities and the region as a whole.4 It needs to be stressed that the Indigenous groups described here are living under the aegis of the Laotian state and that they are not free to simply pursue their way of life according to their own traditions and desires. In fact, their traditional livelihood based on rotational shifting cultivation is de facto illegal in contemporary Laos. It can and is still pursued by the majority of the Indigenous upland groups in Sekong— albeit in a constrained form—only because no workable alternative has yet been devised by the state or international development agencies. As a consequence of the national resettlement program, which had been carried out in the same way as in Vietnam, the vast majority of rural villages in the country were located extremely close to paved roads. In all SUFORD project areas, one could occasionally watch timber trucks passing by, loaded with large logs, but it was only in the Sekong province that I witnessed entire caravans of timber trucks passing through day in and day out. By corroborating my observations with information gained at village meetings, I was able to identify a certain pattern that connected intensive logging of hardwood trees with local infrastructure development. This type of logging appeared to be ongoing only in the most remote districts but had actually already taken place earlier in most other locations. The timber extraction of these large and valuable tree species thus appeared to follow a “moving-frontier” pattern—since, in every locality, there was only a finite amount of such large, valuable trees available for immediate extraction. Whilst the actual extraction frontier was pulsating with timber-cutting activities, these rapidly subsided “behind” the frontier. In 2009, the Lamam and Kaleum districts in Sekong appeared to be situated on such a logging frontier. Villagers in Lamam and Kaleum indicated that logging had

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I have elaborated my thoughts on this subject in Århem (2015).

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Fig. 6.1 Timber truck passing through Lamam District (Sekong Province)

taken place there very recently, often in their “spirit forests.” To compensate for the timber extraction, the companies sometimes offered to build a gravel road leading up to the villages or a village school. Generally speaking, these offers were those that could not be refused, since the companies had obtained official permits to log timber anyway. However, some villages received even less in the form of compensation. For example, the headman of Nangyong village told us how the Vietnamese loggers, who had harvested timber from his village’s forests a couple of years earlier, had only offered him “a few packs of cigarettes.” In hindsight, he expressed deep regret at having helped them locate the valuable forest patches they had sought (cf. Baird and Shoemaker 2008:176–194). In the end, however, whatever thoughts the headman might have had about this affair were inconsequential to the outcome, since, technically and legally, the villagers did not own the forests in their territories (see below). This indiscriminate logging is important to the context of this chapter because one needs to have a clear idea of what type of de facto forest management the local forest users were faced with. From the Project’s point of view, this type of forest mining was not really planned but it was happening—and the government was profiting from it. A noteworthy detail in this context was the sheer size of the logs being harvested by the logging companies. Frequently, the logs seen on the trucks were more than 80 cm in diameter. Despite having visited many dozens of Katuic swidden fields and recent fallows (on which the stumps of cut trees were easily visible), I had never seen a single tree stump of such size on any of those fallows (see Fig. 6.1). The largest trees on the swidden fields of the Katuic-speaking peoples were invariably left standing, and these large trees mostly, but not always, survive the

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fires then set by the cultivators. However, even these large trees left uncut in fields were much smaller than those that had evidently been cut by state-sanctioned logging companies. It should be evident from this observation alone, that Indigenous shifting cultivators did not habitually clear their fields in this kind of old-growth forest (I have discussed this at length elsewhere [cf. Århem (2015); Århem/ SUFORD (2010); see also Moran 2000]). In fact, there is no place for such large timber logs in the traditional building culture of the Katuic groups.5 As I entered the Kaleum district for the second time, having witnessed the quantity of timber trucks passing in and out of the area, my role as a consultant for the Project became uncomfortable and controversial. The Project’s purpose was to eventually make possible a sustainable and controlled extraction of timber from village forests (and also protect old-growth forest areas), as opposed to the excessive logging that had previously been carried out by other, less scrupulous actors. Nevertheless, the controlled logging that was to result after the establishment of the Project’s so-called Participatory Sustainable Forest Management (PSFM) regime was undoubtedly going to be far more intensive than the modest timber extraction traditionally carried out by the Indigenous villagers (mainly for building purposes). If the Project would indeed adhere to its stated goals, and assuming that it could control and limit government-sanctioned timber extraction, then (and only then) it could certainly be viewed as the lesser of two inevitable evils. From the point of view of the Project, the most important forest category was (1) the “production forest area (PFA)” because it was from this area that the revenuegenerating timber extraction would take place. It was toward this end—the generation of state revenue—that the entire Project was aimed at. If the Project did not generate timber revenue, then the state would simply discontinue it. The other overarching category (2) was that of the “protection areas,” subdivided into “strict protection zones” and “zones where forest utilization may be allowed.” These zones were defined according to the high conservation value forest (HCVF) concept—a conceptual framework primarily launched by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). The Project’s operation manual outlines the HCVF areas as follows:

High Conservation Value Forests (HCVFs) HCV1: Forest areas containing globally, regionally, or nationally significant concentrations of biodiversity values (e.g., endemism, endangered species, refugia, etc.)

5 In traditional Katuic architecture, only house frames are made of timber and house poles were rarely of a diameter exceeding 30 cm. House walls and floors were made of bamboo, and roofs were made of leaves. The single exception to this rule was the central pillar of a village’s communal house – which could sometimes be made of a considerably larger trunk (40–60 cm in diameter).

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HCV2: Forest areas containing globally, regionally, or nationally significant large landscape-level forests [. . .]. Contiguous forests with a total area of at least 10,000 ha, which are not fragmented or contain only light fragmentation, can be considered as HCV2. (Note: The Project’s documents specify the size necessary for a forest to be considered as an HCV2, but the original FSC’s definition is not that specific.) HCV3: Forest areas that are within or contain rare, threatened, or endangered ecosystems. Lao PDR (Lao People’s Democratic Republic) still has considerable areas of lowland forests, which should be protected and maintained, as well as limestone karsts forests [. . .]. HCV4: Forest areas that provide basic services of nature in critical situations (e.g., riparian buffers, watershed protection, erosion control, wind or fire protection). HCV5: Forest areas fundamental to meeting the basic needs of local communities (e.g., subsistence, health). Lao forests constitute an important source of non-timber forest products (NTFPs), which villagers rely upon for their basic needs. If the villagers decide that certain forest sectors are their main NTFP collection sites, then those sectors should be considered as HCV5. HCV6: Forest areas critical to local communities’ traditional cultural identity (areas of cultural, ecological, economic, or religious significance identified in cooperation with such local communities). HCV6 inside PFAs include sacred forests and spirit forests (SUFORD AF [OM] 2008:15). It should be noted, however, that all the areas covered by the Project (including the study villages we will explore below) had already been predefined by the government as suitable for the establishment of production forest areas. That is, they had been predetermined as not having large, intact, old-growth areas (HCV1–4) nor were they expected to have any areas of cultural significance (HCV6). They were, generally speaking, thus demarcated in forest areas already defined as “degraded forests” (assumed to have less than 10% of forest worth protecting). They were also assumed not to have large areas used by the village (less than 30%). As will be shown below, all these assumptions were most likely wrong. Finally, it should be noted that the paradoxical but central notion to all is that all these production forest activities (i.e., controlled timber production and harvesting) were supposed to take place within the “natural forest.” According to the Project’s technical definition, a “natural forest” is a: “[f]orest established by natural processes over a long period of time resulting in a community of plants and animals and other bio-physical condition, as opposed to a forest plantation established in a few years by seeding or planting seedlings of usually a single or a few species” (SUFORD AF [Toolbox: VII]).

The “natural forests,” as has already been stated, also included what the Project defined as “degraded forest”: “A [natural] forest or a part thereof whose underlying condition is deemed well below that required to meet a given objective, usually timber production. Using stand volume as criterion, a forest is said to be degraded if its average stand volume has fallen below 30 m3/ha” (Toolbox: IV).

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In other words, from the technical forestry perspective guiding the Project, natural forest is contrasted with forest plantations (i.e., industrial forest plantations), not with the fallow forest. Thus, the Project and the Lao state totally omit any consideration of (“natural”) forests used by the Indigenous groups in the context of shifting cultivation. As such, fallows—i.e., regenerating forests—are technically categorized as “degraded natural forests.” Although the government and the Project knew full and well that the Indigenous groups were subsisting on shifting cultivation, they supposed that only areas with extremely young and small trees were part of the shifting cultivation system. A considerable portion of the village landscape, then, which the villagers considered as fallow forests for future use in their cultivation regime, was thus simply viewed as “natural forest” by the authorities and, as such, earmarked for future timber production. This official demarcation of fallow forests into timber production forest thus, in one stroke, excluded Indigenous people from using large portions of their traditional forest lands. As will be shown in the following, large portions of the Kaleum landscape were also perceived by the villagers as “spirit forests,” and, in fact, these were often precisely the areas with NTFPs and high-value timber. Despite the Project’s nominal adherence to FSC’s various categorizations intended to acknowledge and respect local forest use, the villagers were never able to use any of these concepts to actually gain control over these culturally and, for them, economically important forest areas.

Katuic Spirit Forests The spirit forests (or, more precisely, spirit areas in the forest) are, among the Katuic groups, generally larger than those found among other groups in the adjacent areas of Laos and Vietnam. Thus, during the course of my fieldwork for the SUFORD project (in Laos of 2009), I visited a number of different ethnic groups in five provinces, but it was only among the Katuic groups that the spirit forests covered a substantial area of the village forest landscape (in my estimation, some 15–30% of the total village territory). In addition, the Katuic spirit forests were often important sites for the collection of rattan, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, and wild tree fruit. Most importantly, from an ecological point of view, however, is the fact that spirit forests were areas of old-growth forest (since clearing and burning is invariably prohibited in spirit forests), often containing ponds, swamps, waterfalls, caves, tall bamboo, and/or localized stands of specific tree species associated with spirits. These factors make spirit forests repositories of high biodiversity values. As will be detailed below, several spirit forests in the remote parts of the Kaleum district have—or had until recently—substantial populations of elephants and gibbons. Spirit forests, it seems, amount to small, localized biodiversity “hotspots.” Spirit forests, similar to those found among the Katuic groups, are also documented among the Bahnaric-speaking Cau Ma studied by Boulbet (1967, 1975) and hinted at by Condominas (1994) in his classic study of the Mnong Gar (also Bahnaric speakers) in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Accordingly, my analysis of the spirit forests

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among the Katuic groups may also apply to the Bahnaric groups—and possibly to other Indigenous groups in the Greater Annamitic region as well. A common feature among all Katuic groups practicing shifting cultivation is that the forest landscape surrounding their village settlements forms a checkered pattern with fallow forests of varying ages interspersed with fields under current use, old-growth spirit forests, and grazing areas for buffalos. Traditionally, the most typical arrangement was to have grazing areas immediately adjacent to the settlement and cultivated fields located somewhat further away. Settlements would also relocate within the village territory periodically (perhaps every 15–20 years on average) to obtain easier access to good (old fallow) forests for agriculture once a certain area started yielding smaller harvests (which often coincided with gradually diminishing game animal harvests within a section of the landscape). Spirit forests also interspersed the landscape, but, generally, villages would not be established in close proximity to the more powerful spirit hills. Each spirit area is said to be owned, ruled, and protected by a spirit who is conceived of as the master and guardian of the area. A typical spirit forest is a forested hill and the adjacent surrounding forest. I refer to this area as the “spirit hill” and/or “hill spirit”—since Katuic interlocutors do not distinguish the hill from it spirits; the hill is not only the abode of its spirits but also, as it were, its “body” (i.e., if you kill the natural features of the “body” [the hill], the spirit dies). In other words, the hill is the spirit (here, the spirit, in singular, refers to the master of the community of lesser spirits usually associated with a spirit hill or forest). The protective governance of the master spirit over its hill and forest domain is expressed by a particular set of taboos (dieng): the spirit prohibits various kinds of human interventions in the spirit area. These taboos invariably involve the prohibition on clearing, burning, and cultivating in the area but may also include restrictions on the extraction of certain animal and plant resources. The taboos are strict and are still adhered to in remote villages. If disrespected, then the master spirit and his spirit helpers will punish a member of the transgressor’s village—usually by causing illness or some other kind of misfortune. The entire institution of spirit forests and the associated set of taboos thus function as a sort of Indigenous “conservation regime,” a local patchwork of nature reserves. I argue that the set of beliefs and practices associated with these spirit forests constitutes an ethical code, whose detailed specifications vary from one spirit forest to another, instructing humans on how to behave in the forest. Usually, there are several spirit areas in a single village territory. Considering the large spaces in the village forest landscapes that were—at least traditionally—set aside as “spirit areas,” this spiritually motivated landscape management system should not be ignored as a biodiversity-maintaining system in its own right, even in terms of modern ecology. These spirit areas-cum-nature reserves—as opposed to many of the protected areas created by modern conservationists—were often nonetheless areas important to the village’s overall livelihood. Typically, the “masters” or “guardians” of such spirit areas permitted the selective extraction of plants and animals from their territories. The resources available in spirit areas are different from those available in fallow forests primarily due to the fact that these resources have been protected from fire.

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The fact that the master spirits of the landscape are regarded as powerful superiors provides the environmental ethic with a binding force and powerful sanctioning quality—turning it into a kind of animistic “moral ecology.” Therefore, people do not lightly transgress the law of the land and the rule of the spirits. Moreover, the sacrificial relationship with the spirits gives the Katuic variety of animism a pronounced religious character (missing in prototypical animism; Århem (2016)). Katuic people are, as it were, “worshippers” of their spirit-imbued landscape or, rather, the complex notion of spirit forests amounts to something like a “cult of ecosystem spirits”—a ritualized recognition of the dense interconnectedness of people and forest and of the importance of particular ecological “nodes” in the landscape on which human survival and prosperity ultimately depend (Århem 2015). The spirit-infused landscape of the Katuic upland peoples can be seen as diagnostic of an animistic ontology, but one that, in certain respects, differs from the current consensus on animism. Hills, patches of forest, stream sources, strangely shaped stones, and other features of the landscape are said to be inhabited by (or incarnations of) spirits, thus constituting kinds of nonhuman subjects and agents with whom humans continuously communicate and interact. However, different from the predominant view on animism today, human relations with the animate environment is in Katuic cosmology neither mutualistic nor reciprocal. Katuic relational cosmology is hierarchical. As such, humans place the powerful landscape spirits (the “outside” spirits) ontologically above themselves. People submit to the spirits, including the “inside” spirits—the ancestors dwelling inside the village and roaming the immediate vicinity of the village settlement. Even today, villagers generally affirm that one (or perhaps several) hill spirits are the ultimately “rulers” of each village and its surrounding forests. This will be borne out in the ethnographic examples below. Overall, this relationship between human and spirits is thus asymmetric. This is why the villagers have to sacrifice domestic animals—pigs, cows, goats, and buffaloes—not only to their ancestors but also, more importantly, to the landscape spirits to ask them for protection, prosperity, and well-being (Århem 2015, 2016). In summary, Katuic cosmology amounts to a moral ecology in the sense that the land and the landscape, notably hills, respond to human action either with blessings and protection when treated well or with rage and punishment in the form of illness and misfortune when treated badly. As I have described in detail elsewhere (Århem 2015), ideally, each village has a specific protective spirit hill guarding and monitoring its human subjects—their moral behavior toward one another and their behavior toward the animate forest environment surrounding the settlement. Katuic peoples do not differentiate between moral transgressions in human-to-human relationships and transgressions in human–environment relations. Both village and forest form a single moral community. The presence of spirits in the landscape thus serves to ensure compliance with the ethical code of the land and to maintain and reproduce the network of protected spirit forests in the village forest landscape. Therefore, the village forest landscape constitutes an integrated social, cosmological, and ecological domain—a cosmopolity (Sahlins 2017).

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Two Case Studies As I introduce the two villages examined in this chapter, the reader will be offered a view of the village forest landscape as it is visualized and conceptualized by the villagers themselves and transferred onto the participatory maps mentioned above. While presenting and discussing the first of these maps, namely, that of the village of Loy, I also briefly describe the procedure that we (my assistant/interpreter and I) used to produce them. After introducing the jointly produced village map for each village, I then proceed to describe the various spirit areas of each village territory. The description of the spirit areas is mainly based on my forest treks together with the local guides from each village. The forest walks and, particularly, the stories relating to the hills and forests that we traversed during the treks describe a landscape imbued with meaning and perceived as being inhabited by a variety of spirit agents. The walking, looking, and listening—the entire sensory and intellectual engagements with the forest landscape during the walks—were, of course, more genuinely reminiscent of the local mode of interacting with the environment than were the mapping activities. Both activities, however, took place on my initiative. Nevertheless, the mapping activity and the resulting maps provided us with a highly useful tool for visualizing some of the ways in which the local communities viewed landscapes. As will become evident, these participatory maps differed considerably from the “cartographic gaze” encoded in the official maps circulating in government agencies and among the Project staff. Compared with the Project villages in other provinces and districts, the communities in Kaleum were unusual in many respects. As noted above, they still relied fundamentally on shifting cultivation along with hunting and gathering for their subsistence. In Laos’ mountainous regions, taken as a whole, this reliance on traditional means of livelihood is becoming increasingly rare as more and more villages engage in cash cropping and wet-rice farming. However, the study villages in Kaleum were also exceptional in that they were still located on their ancestral lands (i.e., within their traditional village boundaries). Most other Project communities had been resettled at considerable distances away from their ancestral territories. In Kaleum, however, village boundaries appear to have been “worked out” generations (perhaps even centuries) ago. Where the borders of one village ended, the territory of the next began. Our main objective when asking villagers to produce maps of their village territories, that is, of their settlements and forestlands (regardless of the actual legal status of those forests) was to see how they categorized the landscape and to what extent those categories corresponded with the “official” technical and administrative categories. To me, this endeavor represented a crucial part of the exploration of their Indigenous “traditional ecological knowledge.” When we talked to the villagers, my assistant-cum-interpreter and I typically used categories such as forest (in a general sense, Lao: “pa”), deep forest/old-growth forest (Lao: “pa dong”), and various types of fallows (e.g., young fallows, old fallows, etc.) to loosely explain what we were after. Thus, we would ask them to

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show us how they “divided” the landscape, using the different colored felt pens that we brought with us. We tried to explain that the categories we gave them were just examples and that we wanted to know how they categorized the forest landscape. They could, however, also use “our” categories if they wanted. At a later stage, we would also ask them to indicate more ephemeral “resources” in the forest (such as non-timber forest products, frequent habitats of specific game animals, etc.) using beans, which would simply be placed on the maps that had been drawn. These beans could thus represent anything from “bamboo stands” and “gibbons” to “next year’s agricultural fields.” Through these exercises, it became evident that the local (Katuic) word krung could be loosely translated to “forest” but only in the widest sense of the English word. Thus, krung is used to both describe “a fallow” (krung aruihh) and old-growth forest (krung chrung). The term “krung” does not in itself specify any particular kind of forest cover as specific vegetation types are rather defined by the “suffix” that follows the generic term (as in krung chrung—old-growth forest).

Loy Village: Mapping Exercises The village of Loy was the first community where we attempted to use our methodology of participatory map making and “forest walking.” As outlined above, for the Loyians, all types of fallows as well as old-growth forests were different types of krung. This constituted a problem that rapidly became clear to us: Loy villagers (and the same was true in the other villages we visited in Kaleum) tended to use the Lao term “pa palit” (“production forest”) for the area used in their shifting cultivation (i.e., swidden forest). However, to the professional foresters—as well as to the government and the Project officers—a production forest only had the narrow technical meaning of a forested area set aside for timber harvesting (and timber regrowth). Often, a good way to understand the meaning of a term is to learn the meaning of its opposites or antonyms or simply what things are not encompassed by the term in question. What areas, then, in the Nge-Kriang landscape were not krung? First, such non-krung areas include lands associated with current dry-rice cultivation and various other similar crops (see below for exceptions). All these cultivation areas had their specific names and were not considered krung (e.g., rice field was “öm hare” [“öm”: field; “haré”: rice]). Moreover, fields that had very recently been left fallow were classified as halai and were not considered krung. Virtually all other areas in the landscape, even fields that had been left to regrow only 2 or 3 years, were considered krung of one form or other. Interestingly, even “grassy” areas (krung tang plang) could be referred to as krung, but with the added “suffix” tang. Likewise, bamboo areas were krung tang lia. The tang suffix, however, was not used to designate various types of “forest gardens” (including cassava, banana, and vegetable gardens in the forest). These latter types were instead referred to as various forms of trohh (or krung trohh). In the Kaleum landscape, grassy areas were typically only

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Fig. 6.2 Mapping the landscape together with Loy villagers. This map includes pre-printed streams with some roads marked. The preprinted streams ensure that the features added by the villagers match up with official maps of the area

found on abandoned village sites (vil rohh). Whereas abandoned fields rapidly regenerate into forests, the actual village grounds do not. Instead, they become (seemingly permanent) grassy patches surrounded by forests. However, after several decades, they may also transform into rattan-dominated patches. We made two maps with the Loy villagers. First, a freehand map (a hand-drawn map on a blank sheet) and later a “hybrid” map (a map that was hand-drawn on top of a preprinted “scientific” map, on which only the stream systems were printed). Previous mapping experiences with the Katu in Vietnam (as well as elsewhere in Laos) had taught me that villagers were often fully capable of using even small streams to “orientate” themselves on maps. Sometimes, however, with freehand maps, the dimensions and proportions of various parts of the landscape could be skewed. This possibility of skewing diminished when we used a preprinted map with streams indicated in accordance with the official geographic information system (GIS) data available. For the second map (see Figs. 6.2 and 6.3), we first asked the villagers to identify areas “which had at some point in the past been farmed” and areas “which had never been farmed.” We also asked them to indicate “spirit areas.” Finally, we also encouraged to add other categories, which they deemed relevant. The resulting map contained more categories than anticipated: Green: Areas that have never been cleared nor used for agriculture, i.e., primary forests Crosses: Sacred areas Pink: Areas destroyed “during the war” (Vietnam War)

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Fig. 6.3 A participatory map of Loy drawn on a pre-printed baseline map (indicating streams). The map shows the three main spirit areas (marked 1–3) plus the estimated location of the Korraam spirit area (4). Green indicates “never farmed” areas, Yellow “at some point used for farming,” Pink “forests destroyed by the War” and crosses (x) “areas inhabited by spirits.” The beans on this map shows the areas used by the elephants in the dry season; note that elephants dwell almost exclusively within the spirit areas

Yellow: All areas that have been farmed, even as far back as 200 years ago Pencil lines: Elephant migration routes (see below) Orange: Areas that have never been used for agriculture but where selected cutting has taken place

The first thing to be noted on this map is that a considerable portion of the Loy village landscape (25–35% of the territory) has never been used for agriculture or for selective cutting of timber (green). This means that the villagers of Loy had consciously avoided using these areas for agriculture in the past and in the present. However, the largest category comprises the yellow-colored area. Yellow represents “areas that have at some point in time been used for agriculture, even as far back as 200 years ago.” It should be noted that this area included many areas, which, according to the Project, were considered to be “natural forest” (and slotted for timber production). The Loy map, however, does not indicate whether these yellow areas are covered with grass and shrubs or large trees. All we know is that the yellow areas, at some point in time, have been used for agriculture. The map simply tells us that this large section of the landscape historically has been used for agriculture. The pink-colored area was a great surprise to me. It represents that part of the village landscape that the Loy villagers perceived as having been “destroyed by the War” (Vietnam War). I had expected this category to be much smaller. Where the two categories (pink and green) intermesh, we were informed that the vegetation, despite never actually used by the villagers, nonetheless does not consist of

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old-growth forest. According to villagers, these areas had instead been degraded by wartime bombs and fires. Some of the pink areas, however, also represent former spirit areas, which, after degradation during the War, had become part of the local “production landscape,” i.e., used for swidden agriculture (pink within yellow). The true old-growth forests—the “pristine” forest areas that had not been degraded at all—are thus the green areas with only a few pink dots.6 Spirit areas are indicated on the Loy village map with crosses. A surprisingly large portion of the noncultivated forest areas (green) are marked with crosses.

Loy Village Spirit Areas While we were drawing the landscape in Loy village on one of the blank sheets I had brought, the villagers indicated three important spirit areas in the landscape, all of which also represented old-growth forest. This prompted further questions and discussions, which spurred us to visit all the three spirit hills and ask more questions about them during our visits. Based on this information, we set out to visit the hills of Pa’ehh, Terrååm, and Dreen. To understand the local landscape from the emic perspective, it was evident that we needed to understand its spiritual significance. The areas marked with the numbers 1–4 (with corresponding names in the margin) in Fig. 6.3 (and in Fig. 6.10) indicate what the locals claimed to be major spirit areas in the village forest landscape. Three spirit hills—Pa’ehh, Terrååm, and Dreen—seemed to be considered particularly important to the Loy villagers. Together, these three spirit areas of the Loy territory clearly formed a large contiguous forest area with considerable tracts of old-growth forest, stream sources, ponds, and saltlicks. Although the forest landscape was clearly “broken up” by fallows and agricultural fields, all the spirit areas were nonetheless to some extent connected to each other. In order to understand why and how the Loy villagers had apparently preserved such large areas as spirit forests for decades, perhaps centuries, one needs to pay particular attention to the stories the villagers tell about such spirit areas. Interestingly, many of the localities indicated as spirit areas appear to confirm to the FSC’s criteria for high conservation value forests. For example, these spirit areas are claimed by the villagers to be important habitats for gibbons and elephants as well as refuges for groves of large, old trees. Spirit hills often have waterfalls, watering

6 The places where “selected cutting” had taken place but had never been used for agriculture are marked with orange dots (northeast of Loy). As can be seen, this category is fairly restricted to the area surrounding Terrååm Hill (see below). When I first proposed this category, I assumed that these were the areas where local community members extracted timber for house construction. However, the areas indicated on the map as orange (see Figs. 6.2, 6.10), turned out to be locations that had been visited by a logging company (see below). Instead, the village timber extraction areas, as later explained to me during forest walks, were primarily located in the fallow forest zone (i.e., yellowcolored area).

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holes, and/or perennial ponds (also important for wildlife) and, in one case, have claimed to be located near the only salt lick in the village territory. Even so, the spirit areas did not conform to the FSC concepts, since areas could simultaneously contain “high biodiversity values” while also being important for NTFP collection and important from a religious standpoint. The FSC categories were, instead, conceived of as mutually exclusive (i.e., old-growth forests could not conceivably also be village-use areas and so forth). The Indigenous way of managing the landscape, however, appeared to have enabled spirit areas to preserve their biodiversity values, despite potentially also being used for hunting and gathering (see below). When considering specific spirit areas in the visited villages, one should keep in mind some of the more detailed specifications of what ought to be considered as HCV1 areas: HCV1.3: (Areas where there is a) concentration of species of conservation significance and endemic species. The presence or potential presence of one or more species included in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list (or a) critical temporal concentration (of biodiversity). This can include critical breeding sites, migration sites, and migration routes or corridors of wildlife. HCV1.4: (Areas where there is a) concentration of keystone resources. “Keystone resources can include mineral licks, permanent water pools (during the dry season [for wild animals]), and concentration of plant and non-plant food items critical to endangered and critically endangered [animal] species” (SUFORD AF [OM]:92–93). From the perspective of the Project’s steering documents (due to the fact that the old-growth forests in the Indigenous territories of Kaleum were not completely contiguous), the entire forest area in the district was labeled “degraded” and, for this reason, slotted as suitable for PSFM (i.e., for timber production/timber harvesting). Yet, Loy village—despite its patchy “degraded” landscape—actually maintained its own elephant herd along with several gibbon communities (this was also the case with the Chrehh and Tang Plang villages). This was only possible due to the presence of spirit forest areas, which had been preserved by the Loy villagers. As for the importance of the types of “local” ecological features that were preserved in these spirit areas, rainforest ecologists Ghazoul and Sheil write: “There are many small-scale localized forest features that contribute to supporting a variety of suitable sites to find mates, breed, nest, bury eggs, complete larval stages, and seek dry season food. Animals often travel great distances to feed at mineral licks, drink at open pools, or breed at special sites. Many insects and even some vertebrates require specific types of water bodies [. . .] to complete their life cycles. These may need to be still or flowing water, oxygen rich or stagnant, shaded or sunlit, rich in prey or free of competitors. [. . .] Some forest features have their own specific ecologies. Many caves possess an endemic biota, while also harboring species [. . .] that interact with the surrounding rain forests. [. . .] Forest gaps, caused by tree or branch falls, support many gap specialist plants and animals [. . .]. Less ephemeral are waterfalls, escarpments, or river banks, where the more open forest provides habitat for forest edge or gap-loving species” (Ghazoul and Sheil 2010:145–146).

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The Project documents list the HCV6 category last. Moreover, by far, it is given the least attention in the documents—presumably because of the tacit assumption that cultural values are considered less important than the high conservation values (HCVs), which are defined by natural science criteria. The HCV6 category is defined as: HCV6.1: Sacred or spirit forest. These areas include sacred forests (including cremation/burial grounds) and spirit forests/trees for offerings to obtain good luck in various endeavors or forests to be avoided because of bad luck to visitors (this categorization may change later after several demonstrations that there is no need to fear by working in the area). HCV6.2: Forests of cultural importance. These areas are mainly used for festivals and other cultural celebrations (SUFORD AF [OM]:94, emphasis added). I find the italicized sentence (in parenthesis, above) particularly interesting. Why would SUFORD feel the need to change local peoples’ perceptions in this manner? The way that the Loy villagers categorized the landscape was not an exception but, as we shall see, rather the norm for the Indigenous communities in the Kaleum district as a whole. It was also, in all likelihood, indicative of the traditional way of viewing the landscape among all Katuic-speaking communities in both Laos and Vietnam. In the remaining part of this section, I provide a more detailed look at the spirit hills in Loy, placing particular emphasis on the apparent similarities between local understanding of spirit areas and the way conservationists define areas of high conservation or biodiversity value. What follows is therefore a more fine-grained analysis of important spirit areas (hills/forests), based on the participatory mapping process and forest walks to such spirit-inhabited or spirit-controlled forest areas. Given the many similarities between the Katuic hill spirit lore in Kaleum and that of the Katu people in Vietnam, I take my account of this spirit lore to be generally valid for all Katuic groups in both Laos and Vietnam.

The Pa’ehh Spirit Area During the Vietnam War, Pa’ehh Hill had been used by the People’s Army (i.e., the army of North Vietnam) as their main local military base and a considerable number of soldiers were stationed here (against the wishes the of locals). Despite some sections of the Pa’ehh area having been bombed during the War, it is believed that the area’s spirit had remained potent even after the conflict, as was illustrated by the stories told to me while we were walking toward the hill with two local guides. From previously held meetings with villagers, it was apparent that the Pa’ehh Hill spirit was considered the single most important landscape spirit in the entire Loy area. Thus, it was decided that we should visit this area first. We set out to visit this location during our second visit to Loy. Not long after leaving the settlement proper, we began to see visible traces of the War. For

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example, many bomb craters could still be seen from the forest trail we followed. Some of the area immediately adjacent to the trail was being used for shifting cultivation. After walking a bit further, the shifting cultivation clearings began to disappear from view (we were now about halfway between the village and the spirit area). Yet, despite the lack of further clearings, the forest still did not have the appearance of an old-growth forest. Our guides told us that we had reached the outskirts of the Pa’ehh spirit domain. When I asked them why the forests did not seem very old (as we would have expected in a spirit forest area), the two guides pointed out that during the War, the forest was partially destroyed by bombs and ensuing forest fires. After the conflict, apparently believing that the spirits or the area had disappeared, one local man had decided to clear and burn this area for cultivation. The following information was recorded during a conversation with my two guides during the walk to Pa’ehh Hill: “Before the War, this area was considered forbidden for farming. But after the War one man decided to farm here, because the forest had been bombed. It was a mistake. One day he suddenly saw lots of blood on the shed he had built in his clearing, but he could not see any dead animal near the shed. [There seemed to be no ordinary explanation for the appearance of this blood. . .]. The villagers all believe that the blood was a sign left by the Pa’ehh spirit. The man and his entire family later died from illness” (From a conversation with my two guides during the walk to Pa’ehh hill.)

Since those deaths occurred, no other villagers have attempted to clear this area again. Our guides also told us that nobody had attempted to hunt large animals in the area out of fear of the spirit. Despite the area having been ecologically harmed during the War, the Pa’ehh spirit was still vigilantly guarding his domain. As was revealed during our visit to the hill, villagers could nonetheless still collect non-timber forest products from the area without fear. Indeed, my two guides rather quickly managed to collect an entire meal (for four people) consisting of rattan shoots, small bats (found inside large bamboo stems), and crabs (from the adjacent little stream). The whole collection process took about half an hour. Particularly, the periphery of the Pa’ehh area was apparently a well-known rattan resource area intermittently used by the villagers. Closer to the core of the Pa’ehh area, the guides indicated a large liana species, which they claimed thrived in this particular area and was a vital source of food for the village forest’s elephant herd (see Fig. 6.4). Apparently, Loy had its own elephant herd, and the Pa’ehh Hill was vitally important for the herd’s survival. Later, as we visited the other spirit hills in the Loy territory, we were told that those hills were also seasonally visited by the same elephant herd. Elephants are listed on the IUCN red list of threatened animal species. As such, regardless of the type of forest covering the area, Pa’ehh Hill should qualify as an HCV1 forest according to the Project’s conservation criteria regarding “[. . .] critical migration sites, routes or corridors of wildlife” and/or areas featuring a “concentration of plant or non-plant food items critical to endangered and critically endangered species.” This should also be the case with the two subsequently visited spirit areas in the Loy territory (described below).

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Fig. 6.4 A plant claimed to be important to elephants (Pa’ehh Hill)

Because the villagers used Pa’ehh for NTFP collection, it could also be considered an HCV5 area. Additionally, since it was one of the most spiritually important areas in the village forest landscape (as will be described shortly), it should also be considered an HCV6 area. At the core of the Pa’ehh area, there were also many visible pieces of scrap metal left from the War (see Figs. 6.5 and 6.6). According to my two forest guides: “The Vietnamese [i.e., the People’s Army of Vietnam] made their camp here. It was a big camp and they even had trucks and tanks here. We told them that the place was a spirit hill and it was dangerous but they did not listen. Then, on one occasion, a huge bear entered their camp and attacked them. They shot at it with machine guns but it did not die. They were rattled by this and came to ask us about the bear. We explained to them that the bear had been sent by the Pa’ehh spirit, so they should be careful and move their base to another place. But they still did not move the base.”

Despite the sacredness of Pa’ehh Hill, the villagers pointed out that this location and its immediate surroundings did not have as many large trees as some of the other areas (Terrååm was the hill that had the largest concentration of large, old trees, at least until recently). Regardless, according to the villagers, Pa’ehh was by far the most powerful—indeed, the most “dangerous”—hill in the village territory. It was not until the end of our stay in Loy that I understood what one Loy village elder meant when he told us that “all the blood flows to Pa’ehh.” He explained this cryptic saying by way of another story about the hill: “During the time of our ancestors, people came here to escape from the Bee War. Bees were travelling in large swarms, attacking people. A few families settled in the flat area [about half

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Fig. 6.5 A metallic object within the Pa’ehh area

a km from Pa’ehh Hill]. One day, the headman of that small community was sharpening a knife when he and his family heard noises as if people from another village were hunting deer nearby [on Pa’ehh Hill]. The headman went to investigate but could not see anybody there. The strange noises moved closer, however, and now seemed to be coming from the sky above their houses. When he looked up, he saw a man who had a snare around his neck and was being pulled up into the sky. The strange voices said ‘this deer is very strong.’ Then the apparition disappeared. [Some time] later the headman felt a pain in his neck and cried for help: ‘Please untie this rope, I cannot breathe.’ But, in fact, there was no rope around his neck. After a while, he stopped breathing and died. Then, even though the man was already dead, a spirit possessed him and said: ‘This deer is very strong; if I don’t get help from the other villagers, I’m going to lose it (told by a Loy village elder).’”

To my understanding, the expression “all blood [in the village] flows to Pa’ehh” referred to the fact that Pa’ehh was the main tutelary hill spirit in the Loy village territory and, therefore, this alluded to the idea that the blood of all the communal sacrifices to the village spirit (Pa’ehh) was believed to “flow” to Pa’ehh Hill. It should also be understood from the story above that the headman who died was “the

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Fig. 6.6 Another relic from the Viet Nam War lying in the middle of the Pa’ehh spirit forest

founding ancestor” of Loy village and, as such, his death initiated a sacred bond or “contract” between the Loy community and the hill spirit in question. The same theme, that of a human person being killed by a spirit and thus becoming a link—a “spirit mediator”—between the living villagers and their tutelary spirit recurs in other similar stories. See, for example, the stories from the Katu in Vietnam (Århem 2015).7

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The Pa’ehh Hill story is also interesting because it highlights the cosmology of the Katuic peoples. The hill spirit apparently perceives humans as prey or game animals, in this case, deer (cf. Viveiros de Castro 1998). This is why, in the story, the spirit mistakenly traps and kills the ancestral founder of Loy village. The man is killed by suffocation, as if caught in a snare trap—the most common way of trapping and killing game animals among Katuic groups.

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The Terrååm Hill Like the spirit of Pa’ehh, the Terrååm spirit was mentioned almost immediately when we started questioning the villagers in Loy about the spirit areas in their landscape. Prior to the War, Loy village had been divided into two sections or hamlets, both of which considered themselves to be part of a single community and as co-owners of the village forest. Both hamlets, however, were settled at a “safe distance” from the Terrååm spirit zone. Indeed, when the government authorities suggested that both these hamlets should be merged and relocated to the present location of Loy (near Terrååm), this suggestion caused a great deal of concern amongst the village elders. Certain elders objected by saying, “It is too close to the Terrååm [spirit] area.” They explained that “If a village is placed so close to a spirit area, villagers will inevitably disturb the spirits there.” During a forest walk to Terrååm Hill, as we passed a clearing and entered an area of dense forest, we encountered clear signs of past human presence. Not far into this forest patch, our guides pointed toward a 5–6-meter man-made pole that had been erected at this location. According to the guides, in a bygone era, this had been one of the legs supporting a giant rice granary built “to withstand elephant attacks” (Fig. 6.7). The guides also claimed that the area had been cultivated “about 200 years ago.” A bit further into the forest, we passed an “old burial ground.” From a distance, I could see some large old jars lying scattered within the burial area. After passing through the old village cemetery and walking a little further, we entered an area with tall trees. At this place, the two guides stopped and explained that these tall trees marked “the gate” to the Terrååm area. Many of the trees were still standing, but some of them near “the gate” (Fig. 6.8) had been felled. However, not all of the Terrååm area was made up of large trees. As we walked deep into the area, we passed a dense grove of extremely large bamboos (Fig. 6.9). At a village meeting prior to the forest walk, the villagers told us that major timber-felling activities had taken place in Terrååm in the recent past (in 2005 or 2006). Most of this timber felling occurred along the edge of Terrååm near two newly constructed “poverty-reduction roads.” Various logging companies used this term to describe such roads. The companies built these roads with permission from the government. Both “poverty-reduction” roads ran parallel to each other for some distance near the western fringe of the spirit area (see the two dark red lines that pass extremely close to the edge of the Terrååm zone in Fig. 6.10, below). One wonders why it was necessary to have two roads running parallel to each other with so little distance between them. One explanation could be that both companies responsible wanted to take full advantage of their salvage logging allowances along their respective roads. Here, salvage logging refers to the practice of allowing road construction companies to cut timber within a certain distance from the roads they construct—a practice common in both Laos and Vietnam. Terrååm was nevertheless probably the spirit area—of the three we visited in Loy—which, despite the destruction wrought upon it, had the greatest number of

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Fig. 6.7 A large man-made pole (between Loy settlement and Terrååm Hill) claimed by our local guides to be part of a 200-year-old rice barn

extremely large, old trees. Many villagers were of the opinion that, when the timber company started clearing the hill (with some help from the villagers), the spirit of Terrååm departed. Others qualified this statement, claiming that, “There are two ponds on Terrååm Hill; one of the two has been destroyed [dried up?], but the other still remains.” They explained that as long as one of the ponds remained, the spirit might still be present. The Terrååm forest still had a resident gibbon community. According to villagers, since one of the pools had been “destroyed” and many trees had been felled, this had reduced the gibbon population. However, the local gibbon population still survived because the second pool remained intact. Ostensibly, the purpose of creating the roads through the village territory was to reduce local poverty. However, most of the timber that had been extracted from Terrååm had not been harvested by road builders but by a different company, one

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Fig. 6.8 The area called “the gate to Terrååm.” From this point onwards, the forest was covered with large old-growth trees. However, along the area’s edges, much of the old-growth trees had been cut down by the road- and school-construction teams (The destroyed area is marked by the number “2” on Fig. 6.10 [orange])

that built the village school. The timber extracted was, in this case, taken as payment for the construction of the school (as mandated by the government). This type of arrangement between villages and construction companies is quite common in Laos. I observed this in many districts across the country. I recorded similar incidences (with minor variations) in other villages. In one Kaleum village (where no mapping was carried out), a number of families refused to send their children to the local school because it had been constructed using timber from an old cemetery forest near the village. The villagers feared that their children might be harmed by the anger of the spirits, which had been offended in the process of building the school. On other occasions, construction companies had built roads directly into forests, seemingly leading nowhere, in a blatant effort to access the most valuable timber within a village territory. Why, among all the available forest areas in the Loy area, had Terrååm been selected by the construction company for the building of a school? One cannot know for certain if it was because it was the only accessible place (as claimed by the

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Fig. 6.9 A very large bamboo stand within the Terrååm spirit area. The outskirts of the Terrååm area could be used by the villagers for harvesting building materials

company) or if the area was, in fact, specifically chosen because of the presence of high-value timber at this location. The villagers themselves commented that before the school construction company had extracted timber from Terrååm (not as construction material but as payment for its services), some of the village’s largest trees had grown there. Additionally, of the three main spirit areas in Loy village territory, Terrååm was the only location that had had a thriving gibbon community prior to the timber company’s onslaught (but see the section on Korraam below). The fact that the gibbons were living specifically at Terrååm and not on the other spirit hills strongly indicates that Terrååm had a type of forest structure that was different from that of the other spirit areas. Sadly, events have unfolded in almost identical manners in other villages throughout Kaleum (cf. also Århem (2015); Århem/SUFORD (2010)). For example, in the neighboring village of Chrehh, a construction company built a school and harvested timber from a spirit hill that, up until then, had been home to a local gibbon population. In summary, although many villagers were initially critical of the idea that timber would be taken from the Terrååm area, they did not feel that they were in a position to counter this decision. Instead, they performed a sacrifice near the entrance to the Terrååm spirit area and implored the spirit to understand that it was not the village’s

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Fig. 6.10 Close-up of the Terrååm spirit area on the map. Note the two roads (red lines) that pass close to the edge of the Terrååm area. The placement of these roads made it possible for the road construction teams to extract valuable old-growth trees from the spirit area (based on the principle of “salvage logging”)

intention to commit this sacrilege. Consequently, they asked the spirit of Terrååm to direct any punishment toward the government and not the villagers. The villagers believed that it was the combination of the vegetation structure and biophysical features of the Terrååm forest that made this place attractive to the gibbons in the first place. These features included the types of trees found at this location, the two pools, and a waterfall. The villagers claimed that all these features were important to the gibbons. Concerning the area’s trees, the prevalence of nyaang trees (“may baak”) was unique in the village territory and, most likely, this was also important to the gibbons. Additionally, the villagers claimed that the gibbons (and other animals) liked to “play” in the spirit area’s waterfall and ponds (Fig. 6.11). Despite the fact that the villagers, although unwillingly, had been complicit in the intrusion into the Terrååm spirit area, they, so far, had not been punished by the spirit. According to some villagers, this was due partly to the preemptive sacrifice they had carried out in order to appease the spirit and to the fact that Terrååm—as opposed to Pa’ehh—was regarded as a benevolent spirit. Others, however, explained that there was no retaliation from the Terrååm spirit because it had simply been crushed and destroyed by the government’s great power. In other words, the ecological damage visited upon Terrååm did not completely destroy the local ecology; however, the harm inflicted upon the area had essentially “killed” the local spirit. In any case, one of our guides described the Terrååm spirit as follows: “Terrååm doesn’t like to cause hardship and suffering. It just shows us signs if it doesn’t want us to do certain things. Terrååm doesn’t kill people. Sometimes, during auspicious

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Fig. 6.11 View from the top of the Terrååm waterfall. This was one of the two “spirit ponds” in the Terrååm area. According to the villagers, gibbons liked to play near the pond days, various spirit hills of Loy can be seen talking to each other. We can see some glowing lights on one hill, then, a few weeks later, from another hill. We think that the spirits sometimes take the shape of young boys and girls who play with each other.”

The villagers, of course, knew why the gibbons needed the old forest. Gibbons are almost completely dependent on fruits, and the old forest is the only place that can provide forest fruits almost for the entire year. The largest trees in the old-growth forests are thus—at least from the primate (and bird) point of view—rich fruit gardens. As I had done in other villages in other districts and provinces, I asked the Loy villagers about the “social life” of gibbons. Khmu and Phong villagers from the Bolikhamxay province, whom I had interviewed earlier, believe that gibbons live in small families led by mature matriarchs who surround themselves with “male lovers,” sometimes killing or kicking out female offspring (since the matriarch wants all the attention from the males). Except for these acts of violence toward the female offspring, the locals claim that gibbon families are extremely peaceful. As a consequence of the matriarch’s jealousy, there are always several males in each family— but only one mature female. People in Loy, noting that the resident population of gibbons has a relatively low number of fertile female gibbons, have concluded that gibbons breed slowly, more slowly than do other animals. My informants in Loy shared these beliefs about the social life of gibbons, with only small variations. These ideas are not entirely commensurate with scientific research on gibbons, but very little is actually known about their social life in the wild. Conservationists working in Laos, among them Chris Hallam, have carried out

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research on Indigenous people’s knowledge of gibbon ecology (Hallam 2011). Investigators conduct this research on gibbons for a number of reasons. One of which is that most of Southeast Asia’s gibbon species are on IUCN’s red list and, thus, of great interest to conservationists. However, gibbons are also indicators of rich old-growth forests; as opposed to many other species, gibbons can only survive in such habitats. According to Hallam, asking villagers if there are any gibbons in their village territory is one of the best ways to quickly find out if there are any true old-growth forests within a village’s territory. Hallam’s and other researchers’ work show that, to many upland groups in the Annamites (Hallam’s research was conducted primarily among the Tay Moi), gibbons are enmeshed in a plethora of spirit notions. Although several Indigenous groups in the region do not necessarily have explicit taboos on hunting gibbons, many of their traditional beliefs imply de facto restrictions on hunting gibbons under certain circumstances. Given this context, I wondered if the villagers of Loy considered it permissible to hunt gibbons. At first, my informants answered this question in the negative; there was no rule against hunting gibbons per se. However, they explained, it was extremely unwise to hunt female gibbons: “To hunt male gibbons is permitted but to hunt female gibbons is bad. And if you try to shoot the female you will always miss. If you bother or hurt a female gibbon, this will bring bad luck and misfortune to your family. . . There are also mute gibbons on the Terrååm Mountain, and these are absolutely forbidden. To shoot a mute gibbon would be extremely dangerous (local informants).”

Among the upland Mon-Khmer, there were many spirit animals, which, I had been told, the hunter would “always miss” if he tried to shoot. I believe that this is merely another way to express an actual taboo. For example, once you are convinced that you will inevitably miss shooting an animal (such as a female gibbon), then you would not bother trying to harvest the animal in the first place. Every miss, as it happens in Katuic hunting traditions, is perceived as an instance of potentially cumulative bad luck. A miss, in itself, is a precursor to even worse hunting luck in the future. However, as the quote above indicates, my informants claimed that there was— after all—one particular kind of gibbon that was absolutely forbidden to shoot, namely, mute gibbons. If a hunter shot such a gibbon, then the hunter would most likely die. Digging into the literature about gibbons, I found that the vocalization of gibbons was an integral part of the social life of all gibbon species. My informants adamantly claimed that “mute gibbons” where a separate type of gibbon that was different from the “normal” (i.e., vocalizing) gibbons. Adding to the mystery, I was told that mute gibbons look exactly like normal vocalizing gibbons. Eventually, a biologist named J.W. Duckworth proposed a tentative explanation for this mysterious claim.8 He claimed that it had been observed elsewhere that gibbons inhabiting

8

J.W. Duckworth is a conservationist working for the IUCN in Laos. His interpretation of my report of “mute gibbons” was not told to me directly but via Chris Dickinson, a forester working for SUFORD, who had asked his opinion about my enigmatic story.

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localities under extreme threat had stopped vocalizing. This phenomenon, then, could explain why some Indigenous groups consider certain gibbon populations as being “mute.” As we were leaving the Terrååm spirit area, at the top of the Terrååm waterfall (close to one of the local watering holes), we suddenly heard the noise of approaching elephants. My two guides informed me that Terrååm was important to the elephant herd as well, in particular, the waterfall and pool area. They also explained that somewhere near the waterfall and the pool, there was a magical cave. My guides stated that “If you are a bad person and walk under this cliff you will not be able to see that there is a magical door here. [The same happens] if your wife is pregnant, or if you carry medicine to protect yourself against spirits. But if you are a good person, you might see this door.” Spirit “doors”—such as the one mentioned above—appear in stories about other spirit hills in Kaleum and also in stories about spirit hills among the Katu of Vietnam (see also Chap. 7 in Århem 2015).

The Sirens of Korraam Before leaving Terrååm Hill and its gibbons, there is an additional story from Loy, which requires mentioning. There is actually another spirit area on the high ridge directly opposite to Terrååm Hill toward the west. For unknown reasons, this area had not been mentioned to us as being one among the important spirit hills of Loy during initial village meetings. Perhaps, it was because its spirit masters were considered so dangerous that the villagers simply never went there.9 The name of this ridge was Korraam. Our local guides explained: “There is a hill range called Korraam, but the peak of that range is called Kuichh Kunng. If anyone passes through that area and hears the spirits there sing, it means that that one or more people in the village will die. This only happens once every few years, but since the place is so dangerous, people give the place a wide berth. The song sounds like gibbon song but they sing only two three times. But these singers are not gibbons, they are spirits. They look like very big and tall humans.”

I find it highly interesting that Korraam’s potent and lethal spirits were claimed to “sing just like gibbons.” Even if one assumes that these “singing spirit giants” were figments of the local imagination, we might nonetheless interpret the “gibbon song” coming from the Korraam giants as something real—that is, as being the actual songs of real gibbons (even though this was not how it was understood by the Loyians). Such an interpretation would in fact mean that—until today—there exists an area in the Loy village territory where gibbons remain undisturbed since this particular area is entirely avoided.

9 However, I feel that this is not a fully satisfactory explanation because Pa’ehh’s spirit was also described as dangerous and yet villagers still went there to collect NTFPs.

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Dreen Hill The last of the three spirit hills we visited in the Loy village area was Dreen. We spent a day walking to Dreen Hill and back again. As was the case with treks to the other hills, the walk to Dreen entailed crossing a patchwork of different forest types, including a grassy area—a tang plang—as well as walking some distance along one of the intra-district roads currently being constructed. Concerning the grassy area, it was covered by short-to-medium grasses. This area was a vil rohh—a place where a now abandoned settlement had been located. All old and abandoned settlement sites look the same, i.e., grassy patches in the forest. In contrast to the fast regeneration of forest on fallow fields, it apparently takes an extremely long time for the forest to reclaim such vil rohh sites. The dominance of short and medium grasses in this area does not mean that it is useless to the locals. On the contrary, this is a prime collecting place for certain herbs and vegetables—particularly along the banks of the small stream that passes through the area.10 Old village sites—such as this one— are also used for gathering fruits from the fruit trees, which grow interspersed in the area (possibly planted in the past). Informants in several Kaleum villages claim that fallows are often more important than old-growth forest areas as a source of food and other forest products. This affirmation reflects the gendered division of labor in Katuic society: As such, fallows are typically the working area of women who, on a nearly daily basis, collect most of the food-related non-timber forest products, whereas the men collect other forest produce from old-growth forests. After leaving the abandoned village site, we passed through a varied landscape, some parts of which had been used for agriculture, whereas others had not. Our guides told us that the War had degraded many of the old-growth spirit forests in the village territory so that they now looked more like fallows—although they had never been cultivated. As had been the case when we walked to Pa’ehh, our guides pointed out a number of large bomb craters (and even some remaining bomb shells) along the way—as if to provide concrete evidence of what they had just told us (see Figs. 6.12 and 6.13 below). On Dreen Hill itself, the trees were large and the trunks spaced quite far apart. The hill is located at the intersection of two distinct stream sources. One of the streams runs close to the village’s only salt lick. Our local guides explained that “Many animals come to this place [the salt lick close to Dreen]. Some of them are protected by the Dreen spirit. If we were to try to shoot any of them, we would miss. If a hunter misses an animal here, he will know for sure that that animal belonged to Dreen.” Although not located inside Dreen Hill, the salt lick was connected to one of the streams originating from the hill and, therefore, it is regarded as “belonging” to the Dreen spirit. It is my understanding this meant that hunters needed to restrain 10

Since villages are usually set up near streams, these grassy areas are typically well-watered. Particular types of plants can thus be gathered here, which are distinct from the flora available in young fallows.

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Fig. 6.12 The remnants of an old bombshell. Villagers claim that bombs and forest fires destroyed large areas that were previously old-growth forest. Sometimes, local groups attempted to farm these war-ravaged areas

themselves while hunting in the vicinity of the salt lick. While it was not clear to me whether the villagers could or could not shoot animals around this salt lick, it seemed that any skilled hunter had to be careful about what he shot in and around this area and he had to be highly attentive to any signs of its local spirit. He would not try to shoot any animals he believed was “under spirit protection,” particularly animals exhibiting odd behaviors. I did not hear any particular stories about “salt lick spirits” in Loy village, but such stories exist among other groups that inhabit the region (Chazée 2002).

Tang Plang Village Tang Plang was the last village on my Kaleum district itinerary. Although not a particularly remote village, as of 2009, Tang Plang could not be reached by motorized vehicles (at least not from the district center, but, evidently, there existed other transportation routes used by loggers). In fact, while we were walking toward Tang Plang from Chrehh village, we came across a group of pioneer road workers who were measuring distances and marking trees with red paint in anticipation of the coming road construction. This road would connect the Tang Plang settlement to the wider world—to the district center and beyond.

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Fig. 6.13 Another metallic object. Bombshells, bomb craters, parts of broken vehicles, and other scrap metals were scattered throughout the Kaleum village landscape. The craters were often surrounded by bamboo stands and severely degraded forests, confirming the many local accounts of the destruction brought about by the war

The approach we pursued in Tang Plang was similar to that we had adopted in the previous villages. That is, the villagers were interviewed about their village forest landscape and land-use patterns. Maps were created based on the villagers’ responses to questions relating to sacred places and spirits in the landscape. I wanted to understand local forest use and pass this information on to the Project staff so that the local perspective could be incorporated into the design and implementation of the Project. By doing so, hopefully, less harm would be done when the agents of the industrial forestry sector would inevitably swoop down on the village in full force. I wanted the villagers to indicate to me their sacred sites in the hope that they could then—with confidence—relate the same stories to forestry agents. I had been assured by the senior staff of the Project that “any forests of spiritual value” to villagers would not be touched and should be protected from encroachment (however, as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions). In an unforeseen manner, the mapping session in Tang Plang provided more food for thought than did the meetings in other villages. Having already carried out several successful mapping sessions in neighboring communities, I perhaps moved too quickly when I broached the topic of Tang Plang’s spirit landscape at our first village meeting. Compared to what was the case in Loy, which we had visited twice,

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we did not spend much time in Tang Plang trying to introduce ourselves properly to the villagers. In hindsight, I did not allow the villagers sufficient time to become acquainted with me and my assistant and the purpose of our visit, namely, who we were and what we wanted. After the conclusion of the first village meeting in Tang Plang, which I felt had been a productive one, I had the distinct feeling that there was a problem. As it turns out, my feeling was correct. After our meeting had finished, a large group of villagers continued debating loudly with each other in the communal house (in a gathering to which we were not invited). Some elders, who had chosen not to attend the previous meeting, were now present at the communal house. Meanwhile, in the headman’s house, where we were resting, some locals came to sit down and watch us—silently and with troubled expressions. Later in the evening, more people joined, and a kind of informal party ensued with liquor and local snacks. In the beginning of this gathering, the atmosphere was uneasy. One of the men asked us: “What will you do with our spirits that we have told you about? Are you planning to destroy the spirits? We do not want that, we want to keep our spirits.” We assured them that we only wanted to protect their spirits and, with this action, we hoped to clarify any “misunderstandings” they may have had of the Project. Upon hearing this, many of the assembled men appeared to become more at ease. When we arrived at Tang Plang, we were only accompanied by a single low-level forester, who—it turned out—had not been able to effectively explain the reason for our visit. It seemed that the villagers could not determine, initially, whether we were trustworthy or not. After all, their feelings toward government officials and other strangers were often ambivalent and many times negative; the dubious logging activities that I have outlined above—in which government officials and local forestry departments were involved—is a case in point. In the previous year, Tang Plang village had been visited by commercial loggers who were not connected to the SUFORD project. The village headman and a few other men complained to us openly about this particular visit. The told us that they were shocked at the sheer volume of timber that the loggers had extracted from one of the village’s border forests. One villager commented that “with the quantity of timber that they cut, every family in the village could have had a new house entirely built from timber, but they gave us nothing.” After complaining to the authorities about the massive scale of this timber harvest (which, in this case, was not associated with any school-building endeavors), eventually, the villagers were informed that the entire logging operation had actually been a “mistake”—the company had no permission whatsoever to cut timber in Tang Plang’s territory. The village later received an apology from the company—but nothing else. Thus, it was no wonder that the villagers had initially been suspicious of us. On the following day, the mood in the village had changed and people enthusiastically collaborated with us in the mapping exercise. The configuration of Tang Plang’s spirit landscape (Fig. 6.14, below) left an indelible impression on me. On this map, old-growth forest is blue, old fallows are dark green, and extremely young fallows plus currently cultivated fields are yellow. The Tang Plang villagers introduced a new category on this map because they felt that “medium fallow” (i.e., a

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Fig. 6.14 Freehand map of the Tang Plang village landscape

“young forest”) was not really a relevant concept in their village. Instead, they suggested that the type of forest that I called “medium-to-old fallows” (5–15 years or so since last cleared) was better labeled “bamboo forest” (indicated in pink on the map). It should be noted that the colors and categories used on the Tang Plang map were different from those used in Loy. It should also be noted that the map (Fig. 6.14) is not correctly scaled. When maps were drawn by villagers “freehand”—without a preprinted base map showing the streams—the scale was often not correct. For example, the place indicated as “Spirit Pond” was only located about 30 m from the village, whereas Tåång Hill (described below), on the other hand, was several hundred meters away. On the freehand map, they seem to be located at an equal distance from the village. Nonetheless, using cues from the shapes of the streams, it is possible to identify the “true” location of most of these places. The correlation between “ponds” (blue circles), old-growth forests (blue), and spirit areas (crosses) should also be noted. For some reason, the spirit places closest to the village (i.e., the “washing place” and the salt lick [also described below]) were not marked as spirit places on the map (crosses), despite being mentioned as such in conversations. The spirit places mentioned during the initial village meeting seemed at first rather peculiar. For example, one of the important spirit places mentioned was the “washing place” located right at the entrance to the village—an area where a small stream passed extremely close to the village and where local women washed their

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Fig. 6.15 A dried up “spirit pond” next to the Tang Plang village school

clothes (see Fig. 6.14). It should be noted that although the spirit areas on the map were marked with crosses, those closest to the village—although mentioned in discussions—were not thus marked. Perhaps these spirits were considered “degraded”. Another important spirit place (which we also visited shortly after the meeting) was an inconspicuous depression on the landscape—a dried up pond— located only a few meters away from the new village school (Fig. 6.15, below). During the meeting, we were informed that both of these seemingly unremarkable places were associated with illness caused by the spirits dwelling in those places. Furthermore, the only salt lick in the village territory (Fig. 6.16, below), once visited even by elephants, was located at one corner of the village—only a few meters away from the perimeter of village houses. How could it be that these powerful spirit areas—regardless of how inconspicuous they may now appear—were located right next to the village settlement or even inside it? This fact defied what we had learned up until then about local customs, namely, that settlements and fields were usually—indeed had to be—located at some distance away from significant spirit places. It turned out that the village’s current location had been selected by the government in the 1990s (against local wishes). I will come back to this issue after reviewing some of the other spirit areas indicated by the villagers.

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Fig. 6.16 The only salt lick in the Tang Plang area was also located only a few meters away from the settlement perimeter

The Strangler Fig Forest Besides the two previously mentioned spirit places, yet another place—a patch of old forest—was said to be an important spirit place in the village territory. Again, this place was located close to the settlement. On one side, it was bordered by open grassland, which surrounded Tang Plang (Fig. 6.15 above). In another direction, it was bordered by a 10–12-year-old fallow (which our guide told us would be his field next year). The most remarkable feature of the forest itself was that it appeared to be dominated by strangler figs to such an extent that it was difficult to find any trees at all in it that had not been “attacked” by the fig trees (Fig. 6.17). The strangler fig is a name commonly used to refer to a range of different tree species of the genus Ficus (family: Moraceae). Despite its name and its appearance of climbing and killing its host tree, it does not actually kill its host directly. In fact, it does not absorb nutrients from its host. Instead, the host tree usually dies because the strangler figs take over its space in the upper canopy of the forest. That is, the host tree actually dies because it loses its access to sunlight. Despite this tendency to “kill” other trees, it is widely known that the strangler fig is enormously important as a keystone species upholding biodiversity values. Kricher writes: “Fruit trees [such as those found in the old-growth spirit forests described in this chapter] form an essential resource in rainforests. In a study done in an Amazonian rainforest, ecologist John Terborgh learned that the large mammals and birds depend on a continuous

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Fig. 6.17 The strangler-fig spirit in the forest of Tang Plang. This area was located only about 200 m from the settlement and 100 m from the village school supply of fruits such as figs, palm nuts, laurels, and a few others. Even though more than 2,000 species of plants were present in the forests, Terborgh suggested that a mere dozen plant species (including figs) were essential to maintain the assemblage of fruit-eating animals. Terborgh went so far as to suggest that without figs, the ecosystem would be at risk of collapsing. Figs and a few other fruit-bearing plants are keystone species, uniquely important in the rainforest community” (Kricher 2009:162–163).11

All across Southeast Asia (and India), the strangler fig is almost universally regarded as a “spirit tree.” Many outside observers have tended to assume that it is simply the shape of this “tree” and its habit of “killing” its host that accounts for its sacred status. However, I propose that the sacredness of this tree—from the point of view of the Indigenous forest dwellers in the Central Annamitic uplands—might well be related to its tremendously important ecological role in maintaining the biodiversity of the forest. The Katuic people in Kaleum seem extremely well aware of this fact. Their extensive knowledge of the feeding habits of the animals they hunt (or avoid hunting), including the importance of the strangler fig as the primal food source for primates, birds, and other animals in their forests, seems to confirm this suggestion.

11

Note that Terborgh (1992:176) specifically refers to strangler figs in this quotation.

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Fig. 6.18 Villagers pointing at the sacred hill named Tåång. Tåång appeared to be the tutelary spirit of Tang Plang village, taking an active protective role and allegedly helping the villagers as long as they do not clear any swiddens in its territory

Tåång Hill and Its “Nurse” Spirits Of all stories told to us in the villages of Kaleum, the one about Tåång Hill perhaps made the strongest impression on me. The reason was that it spoke so vividly of an extremely special relationship between the villagers and their “natural” surroundings. Tåång Hill thus appeared to be the single most important spirit place in Tang Plang, due to its close relationship with the villagers (Fig. 6.18). We were told that, in the past, the spirits of Tåång Hill often helped the villagers. When a villager fell seriously ill, someone in the community would dream that the spirits of Tåång Hill came to the village—like “nurses”—to attend and cure the sick person. The Tåång spirits, like many hill spirits, were spoken of in the plural. They were seen as helpers and protectors of the village. Therefore, when in the early 1990s, the government requested the Tåång villagers to relocate their settlement to its present location near the hill, and some villagers—out of necessity—began to clear patches of forest for their cultivations on or near this sacred hill, most villagers were concerned that the spirits would feel betrayed and punish them:

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“[. . .] after a villager (it was my relative) decided to clear and burn forest on Tåång Hill, in 1991, several people became sick and died in the village. When the villagers realized that people were dying because the spirits of Tåång were displeased, particularly since those spirits had so often helped villagers in the past, my relative immediately stopped clearing on the hill, and the whole village decided to perform a special ritual in order to ask Tåång’s spirits for forgiveness. Thus, in 1994, when we had collected enough resources for a proper sacrifice to the hill [spirits], we organized the ritual. One group of villagers played the role of the spirits, while another group played the villagers. The group that acted as the villagers asked for forgiveness for having cleared and burnt a part of the hill and then pledged that they would never again [do this]. But the villagers also said that they would still need to go to the hill to cut wood for houses. The group that impersonated the spirits then accepted the other group’s apologies and agreed that the villagers could still use the hill for timber when they needed. Since then, we haven’t had any more problems with the spirits of that hill (one of our local guides in Tang Plang).”

The present location of Tang Plang village had not been a place historically considered appropriate for a village settlement, and this became abundantly clear during the course of our interviews. The sheer number and concentration of spiritually charged places in the immediate vicinity of the current settlement meant that the entire settlement area had been considered a powerful spirit node. The authorities had thus resettled the village in the middle of a spirit zone. What, then, were the main characteristics of this spirit zone? When summarizing the information provided above, one finds that the village was located in a fairly level and, until recently, well-watered and mainly grass-covered area. In other words, the village land was interspersed with marshes and ponds. The area also had a salt lick visited by a great deal of wildlife, and, in the immediate vicinity of the settlement, there was also the notable strangler fig forest. In addition, there were also a small number of huge conifers (unusual in the Central Annamites) adjacent to the (formerly) marshy zone. Wildlife protection has only recently become an overriding consideration in Laotian village development. For example, in the 1990s and early 2000s, the most pressing issue was the implementation of the resettlement and sedentarization program in the uplands along with the abolishment of shifting cultivation through the introduction of wet-rice farming. This explains why it is so common to find former upland villages in Laos (and Vietnam) that have been resettled by the government in marshlands and well-watered areas, thus causing the almost complete destruction of natural wetlands (which were typically converted into wet-rice paddy fields). I can provide no simple answer to the question why this policy was not heavily criticized by international conservation organizations.12 The new location of the village of Tang Plang initially seemed suitable for wet-rice farming. This was due to the fact that it was one of the few flat and wellwatered areas in the village’s traditional territory, and villagers were encouraged to resettle there and to start carving out wet-rice fields from the marshland. The government expected that, by engaging in wet-rice cultivation, villagers would

12

One possible explanation could be that much of the resettlement program took place prior to the arrival of the more powerful international conservation organizations—or in the early years of their establishment in Laos and Vietnam.

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abandon shifting cultivation in the upland forest. However, things did not pan out that way. Within 2 years of implementing the new cultivation system, the streams watering the fields simply dried up. Now, the villagers are back to square one. They have resumed shifting cultivation but find themselves trapped in what they regard as a dangerous spirit area. The lingering question in my mind after visiting Tang Plang was what the “environmental price” for this failed experiment in wet-rice farming had been and what it meant for both the human and the nonhuman dwellers in this landscape? Unquestionably, all the high conservation values pertaining to both “biodiversity” and “culture” had, in one blow, been violated for the sake of implementing an allegedly more “rational” and productive usage of the landscape. Animal migration patterns, access to water holes and perennial ponds, salt licks, birdlife—to mention only a few of the environmental “casualties” involved—had all been sacrificed for the sake of a rural development policy that, in the end, has yielded extremely poor results (cf. Baird and Shoemaker (2008)).

Concluding Remarks In this chapter, I have provided an account of my work as a TEK advisor to the Sustainable Forestry for Rural Development (SUFORD) project in the Central Annamite Cordillera of Laos. The data presented were gathered in two villages inhabited by Nge-Kriang people, a Katuic-speaking Indigenous group in the Kaleum district of the Sekong province. The study in Kaleum focused on the pan-Katuic institution of spirit forests or spirit areas (mabuih in several Katuic languages) and its ecological and cultural significance for the Indigenous groups of the region. In the following remarks, I attempt to generalize the rather detailed descriptive account provided in the foregoing, mainly elaborating on four related aspects of the topic: the ecological character and significance of Katuic spirit forests; the role of the spirit forest institution in the context of the system of rotational shifting cultivation; the close connection between cosmology, ecology, and livelihood in Katuic society; and, finally, the consequences of the rupture of this connection as a result of the impact of current development and conservation interventions in the region. In all essential matters, my conclusions from the Kaleum study in Laos support my findings from an earlier and more extensive study of another Katuic-speaking group, the Katu of Vietnam (Århem 2015). In brief, the notion of spirit forests in the Katuic context refers to specific, culturally demarcated areas in the village forest landscape, which are assumed to be inhabited and controlled by nature spirits (abuih—as in mabuih, spirit area). Each village territory generally includes a number of such spirit areas that together comprise between 15 and 30% of any village territory. This estimate would make Katuic spirit forests significantly larger than the “sacred forests” reported from other areas in Southeast Asia (Dove et al. 2011). Possibly for this reason, my conclusions about the ecological significance of Katuic spirit forests are quite different from

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those of Dove and his collaborators (ibid), who suggest that sacred forests in Southeast Asia generally have little ecological significance. Contrary to this assertion, I maintain that the spirit forest institution among Indigenous groups in the Central Annamites is a key component of the rotational swidden systems in the region and that it plays a fundamental role in sustaining the biodiversity and long-term viability of its forests. My study suggests that Katuic spirit forests tend to consist of old-growth forests of high biodiversity and of special importance for significant mammals (such as elephants and gibbons) and plant species (i.e., the strangler fig). Another apparent characteristic is that each spirit area seems to contain a variety of topographical features including stream sources, water falls, springs, ponds, and salt licks (that are of particular importance for certain mammal species such as wild pigs, deer, and muntjac). Taken together, these characteristics suggest a close interconnection between ecology and cosmology in Katuic culture as expressed in the spirit forest institution. Additionally, the rich primary forest that sustains a diverse and opulent fauna and flora is a major sign of natural fertility, which, in Katuic cosmology, ultimately derives from the powerful spirits—rulers of life and death, lords of the land and its beings, including humans. In practice, spirit forests function as biodiversity reserves and seed repositories for forest regeneration. The village forest landscape can be understood as an anthropogenic ecosystem in which spirit areas form biodiversity nodes, which are connected to each other by forest corridors facilitating ecological connectivity and serving as natural fire breaks between different swidden fields and fallows. As such, spirit forests form an essential part of the rotational system of shifting cultivation that (still) is the basis of the Indigenous livelihood system. This claim stands in stark contrast to the widespread negative view of shifting cultivation held by policymakers, foresters, and conservationists. As a forest management system, rotational swidden cultivation not only includes forest areas under cultivation and fallows for future use but also old-growth spirit forests, which maintain the dynamic equilibrium and ecological functionality of the system as a whole. What allows Katuic spirit forests to function as biodiversity reserves is the system of metaphysically motivated taboos that regulate human land and forest use. Such restrictions vary from one spirit area to another, and they include restrictions on hunting certain classes of animals and/or gathering certain plant species and wild fruit. The one absolute taboo is the prohibition to clear, burn, and cultivate in spirit forests. These sacred rules and restrictions are so deeply rooted in Katuic cosmology and cosmopraxis that their hold on people is only today beginning to erode as a result of the increasing contact with the Lao and Vietnamese majority populations. The massive impact of state development interventions is also undermining various forms of Katuic TEK. However, in remote regions, such as Kaleum, the taboo system and the animistic cosmology (on which it is based), are still strong, particularly among older people. The Central Annamite Cordillera counts as one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. The upland forests in the transborder region of Vietnam and Laos are of critical biological importance for the whole of the lower Mekong River watershed area and, thus, of high conservation priority (Baltzer et al. 2001). In this chapter, I

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have argued that the Katuic animist cosmology and livelihood culture have, until recently, effectively ensured the relative stability and unique biological richness of this forest landscape. The sad irony is that the very success of this Indigenous conservation regime is today increasingly leading to the exclusion of Indigenous people from much of the forest they so carefully have managed. They have been expelled from their homelands as a consequence of modern conservation projects— nature reserves and conservation areas that are off-limits to their former inhabitants and users. At the same time, state-sponsored modernization and development programs turn much of the forest into cash-crop farms, industrial forests, and rubber plantations. As a result, traditional livelihoods disappear or become obsolete. Ecological destruction goes hand in hand with social, economic, and cultural disintegration. The sustainability of Indigenous shifting cultivation in the Central Annamitic landscape hinges on sufficient access to forest land and sufficiently long rotation cycles—i.e., fallow periods of 10 years or more—but also, and equally important, on the continuing vitality of the spirit forest institution. The vitality of this institution, in turn, depends on the continuing vigor of the animistic cosmology that underpins its sacred taboos and metaphysically motivated land-use regulations. When the animistic eco-cosmology erodes, the entire edifice of the Katuic livelihood culture and forest management practices collapses.

References Århem, Nikolas. 2015. Forests, Spirits and High Modernist Development: A Study of Cosmology and Change Among the Katuic Peoples in the Uplands of Laos and Vietnam. Uppsala: Uppsala universitet (Diss.). Århem, Kaj. 2016. Southeast Asian animism in Context. In Animism in Southeast Asia, ed. Kaj Århem and Guido Sprenger. London: Routledge. Århem, Nikolas, and Nguyen Thị Thanh Binh. 2007. A Social-Cultural Assessment of the Indigenous Population along the Ho Chi Minh Highway in Central Truong Son, Viet Nam. Hanoi: WWF Indochina. Århem, Nikolas/SUFORD. 2010. Traditional Ecological Knowledge of Ethnic Groups in SUFORD AF Production Forest Areas: A rapid assessment. Vientiane, Lao PDR: Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and SUFORD. Baird, Ian G., and Bruce Shoemaker. 2008. People, Livelihoods and Development in the Xekong Basin, Laos. Bangkok: White Lotus Press. Baltzer, M.C., Nguyen Thị Dao, and R.G. Shore, eds. 2001. Towards a Vision for Biodiversity Conservation in the Forests of the Lower Mekong Ecoregion Complex. Hanoi and Washington, DC: WWF Indochina/WWF US. Berkes, Fikret. 2008. Sacred Ecology. New York: Routledge. Boulbet, Jean. 1967. Pays des Maaˡ, domaine des génies: Nggar Maa’, Nggar Yaang: essai d’ethno-histoire d’une population proto-indochinoise du Viet-Nam central. Paris: Publications de l’École Française d’Extrême-Orient, 99-0142051-2; 62. ———. 1975. Paysans de la forêt. Paris: Publications de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient, 99-0142051-2; 105. Chazée, Laurent. 2002. The Peoples of Laos: Rural and Ethnic Diversities. Bangkok: White Lotus.

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Condominas, Georges. 1994 (1957). We Have Eaten the Forest: The Story of a Montagnard Village in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. New York: Kodansha Globe. Dove, D., P.E. Sajise, and A. Doolittle. 2011. Introduction: Changing Ways of Thinking About the Relations Between Society and Environment. In Beyond the Sacred Forest, ed. Michael R. Dove, Percy E. Sajise, and Amity A. Doolittle. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Ghazoul, Jazoul, and Douglas Sheil. 2010. Tropical Rain Forest Ecology, Diversity, and Conservation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hallam, Christopher. 2011. Integrating Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Scientific Knowledge to Improve Conservation Planning of Gibbons (Hylobatidae) in Lao PDR. Master’s thesis submitted to the Department of Forest and Ecosystem Science. University of Melbourne. Kricher, John. 2009. The Balance of Nature: Ecology’s Enduring Myth. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Moran, Emilio F. 2000. Human Adaptability: An Introduction to Ecological Anthropology. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Sahlins, Marshall. 2017. The Original Political Society. HAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7: 91–128. Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press. SUFORD AF [OM]. 2008. Operations Manual [OM] for Participatory Sustainable Forest Management in Production Forest Areas. Vientiane, Lao PDR: Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Laos. Terborgh, John. 1992. Diversity and the tropical rain forest. New York: Scientific American Library. Viveiros de Castro, E. 1998. Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism. JRAI 4: 469–488. World Bank. 2020. Lao Biodiversity: A Priority for Resilient Green Growth. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Dr. Nikolas Århem is a cultural anthropologist and Associate Researcher at Uppsala University. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork among Katuic-speaking peoples of Laos and Vietnam. His research interests include indigenous cosmology and ritual, natural resource utilization, biodiversity, and sustainable development.

Chapter 7

Shamans, Spiritualists, Shapeshifters, Healers, and Diviners Among the Hunting and Gathering Societies of Africa Robert K. Hitchcock

Abstract There is significant diversity among African hunter-gatherers in the roles of shamans, healers, and people who connect to supernatural gamekeepers. In some cases, these individuals engage in rituals and activities that are believed to have direct or indirect impact on hunting outcomes or on the environment (such as causing rain). Drawing on data from a variety of African hunting and gathering societies, this paper considers the varied ways in which shamans, healers, and diviners interact with supernatural gamekeepers and with the natural world. Some ritual specialists go into trance, while others conduct divinatory rituals and/or are able to discern supernatural forces or individuals who may be responsible for transgressions that lead to illness and natural disasters. There are continued debates in Africa about the importance of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and its effectiveness in the contemporary world will be touched upon, including whether or not TEK can effectively prevent wildlife depletion and how traditional belief systems address such pandemics as HIV/AIDS and COVID-19. There is evidence that beliefs in supernatural gamekeepers among African foraging peoples may serve to prevent the depletion of wildlife populations. Keywords Africa · Hunting and gathering · Supernatural gamekeepers · Shamans · Traditional Ecological Knowledge · TEK · Conservation

Introduction There is considerable interest in ceremonies and rituals in African societies (Turner 1967; Beckwith and Fisher 1999a, b; Biesele 1975, 1978; Marshall 1957, 1976, 1999). Rituals and ceremonies are practiced in virtually all African societies in order to influence the supernatural and the spirit world. They are also carried out on a calendrical basis (e.g. during the changing of the seasons), or at times when R. K. Hitchcock (✉) Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. J. Chacon (ed.), The History and Environmental Impacts of Hunting Deities, Conflict, Environment, and Social Complexity 4, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37503-3_7

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communities are facing challenges such as droughts or disease. They are also part of initiation ceremonies and occur at significant points in the life cycle: birth, reaching adulthood, marriage, achieving elderly status, and death. Among African huntergatherers, rituals and ceremonies revolve around health and well-being of individuals, communities, and the environments in which they reside. Some rituals are performed in order to influence the natural world—bringing rain, or to entice a supernatural gamekeeper to increase the number of local wild game animals. For our purposes here, religion can be defined as an organized set of concepts, beliefs, values and ideas about the supernatural, the spiritual sphere, and the sacred. Religion incorporates the ceremonial practices that are used to try to influence or interpret elements of the universe beyond people’s control. Hunter-gatherers are often looked to for gaining insights into the origins of religion (Peoples et al. 2016; Peoples and Marlowe 2012; Hitchcock 2019; Solomon 2019). Healing among the hunter-gatherers of Africa takes a variety of forms: laying on of hands, herbalism, going into trance, “sucking” (removing objects from the bodies of individuals that are assumed to cause illness) and a kind of divining (e.g., “throwing the bones”). The Ju/’hoansi San of northwestern Botswana and northeastern Namibia have beliefs about the power that can cause the rain to fall (nlow) (Marshall 1999:168–173). Some Ju/’hoansi and other San such as the Nharo are well-known in southern Africa for their abilities to bring rain (g/a), and they travel widely to places as far as Cape Town, Durban, Gaborone, Harare, Lusaka, Maputo, and Windhoek to engage in rainmaking, especially during drought periods. At a fundamental and basic level, religion consists of (1) a community of individuals; (2) who share representations, ideas, and beliefs about a supernatural realm and the forces or beings inhabiting this realm, and (3) who practice both individual and collective rituals addressing supernatural beings and forces inhabiting a sacred realm (Turner et al. 2018:3). The belief systems of African hunter-gatherers demonstrate their ties to the natural and supernatural worlds (Marshall 1962; Biesele 1975, 1978; Heinz 1975; Barnard 1979; Hammond-Tooke 1989; Low 2008; Guenther 2000, 2020a, b). These belief systems are flexible and are fully capable of changing, depending on both external and internal factors, and they are responsive to conditions in which they and their creator and other gods live.

African Hunter-Gatherers Hunter-gatherers in Africa are generally small-scale and middle-range societies who reside in diverse environments. They have high dependence on natural resources, including wild plants, animals, fish, and insects. Traditionally, hunter-gatherers were people who did not grow domestic crops or keep domestic animals. Hunter-gatherers reside in 25 of Africa’s 54 counties, and they number over 552,000 people (see Fig. 7.1). Characteristic features of African hunter-gatherers include (1) they are sharing-based societies, (2) their land use systems and livelihoods are diversified, (3) they do not own land per se but have communal systems in which land is shared

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Fig. 7.1 Map showing the locations of selected African hunting and gathering societies

by groups, (4) in the past, they were generally mobile, depending on the seasons and presence of other groups in the habitat, and (5) decision making is usually based on consensus and public participation and leadership in general is informal, though there are individuals whose counsel people listen to such as charismatic and wellspoken individuals who are have knowledge of the environment and who maintain oral historical, social, and geographic information (see Table 7.1). In some cases, African hunter-gatherers reside in areas of high biological diversity, such as tropical rainforests; in other cases they reside in savannas, ecosystems which are rainfall driven and in which fire plays an important role in ecosystem functioning. There are also hunter-gatherers who reside in mountain ecosystems such as the AmaThole of Lesotho and South Africa (Wright 1971; Wright and Mazel 2007; Challis 2008). Resource use strategies vary, from ones which are focused on a

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Table 7.1 African Hunter-gatherers and their environments Name of Group San (!Xun, Kwadi, Kxoe)

Location Angola

Environment Dry forest and savanna Savanna

Population Size 14,000

San (Ju/‘hoansi, G/ui, G//ana, G// olo, Khwe, Naro, Ts’ixa,!Xóõ, ǂHoan, ǂX’ao-||'aen) Batwa (“Pygmies”) (Abayanda, Aka, Baka, Bakoya, Bakwele, Bofi, Bobongo, Efe, Mbendjele Yaka, Mbuti) Haddad (Kreda) San

Botswana

Central Africa (12 countries)

Tropical rainforest

350,000–920,000

Chad Eswatini

Savanna Highlands, middleveld Riparian forest Dry forest Dry Forest in Mukogodo Hills Dry forest and hills savannas Dry forest Mountain ecosystem Dry forest/savanna Savanna, Kalahari Desert, and tree-bush savanna and wetlands Savanna and dry forest Savanna and dry forest Savanna and drylands Savanna Dry forest Savanna and dry forest Kalahari savanna with mopane and other trees Zambezi Valley— savanna with trees and bushes Diverse habitats

3000 100

Boni (Aweer) Dahalo Mukogodo

Kenya Kenya Kenya

Ogiek Dorobo Waata Abatwa, Amathole Mikea San (Ju/‘hoansi,!Xuun, Haiǁom, Khwe, ǂKao //Aesi)

Kenya Tanzania Kenya Lesotho Madagascar Namibia

Eyle Kilii San (/Khomani,!Xun, Khwe) Akie (Ndorobo) Hadza (Hadzabe) San (Kxoe) Tshwa San (Amasili)

Somalia Somalia South Africa Tanzania Tanzania Zambia Zimbabwe

VaDema (Doma, Tavara)

Zimbabwe

Total

25 countries

60,000

2000 1000 2000 20,000 42,000 2000 400 1000 38,000

450 1500 7500 5500 1000 1300 2800

1300

Ca. 552,000+

Data obtained from government reports and censuses, work of researchers, development agencies, non-government organizations, indigenous rights’ groups, national archives, the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF), government and international agency reports including the African Commission on Peoples’ and Human Rights’ Working Group on Indigenous Populations/Communities, the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee, Minority Rights Group International, the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, Survival International, the Forest Peoples Program, and fieldwork. Note that the variability in numbers of Batwa in Central Africa ranges from 350,000 to as many as 920,000 (Olivero et al. 2016)

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few species to those exploiting several hundred species. Hunter-gatherers had flexible, overlapping, and interactive use of land and natural resources. Arguably conservation strategies are sometimes employed in which people stop exploiting certain species when they see they are becoming few in number, though this is a matter of some debate (Smith and Wishnie 2000; Hames 2007). Among the Tshwa San of western Zimbabwe and northeastern Zimbabwe, traditional healers (tʃóò-rà, tʃóò- khòè, singular) travel widely in search of medicinal plants to use in healing, and communicating with other healers, accumulating knowledge about the landscapes where they reside. African hunter-gatherers all have some form of “sacred geography.” Landscapes are divided among social units. Group members have a variety of ways to tell their communities and other people about the history and occupancy of these landscapes. These include storytelling, song, showing of places of importance to the young, rock art (which are mnemonic devices in some areas), and marks or blazes on trees to indicate boundaries or demonstrate a form of ownership. Healers, shamans, and other people involved with the supernatural generally have a good understanding of the spiritual and natural forces that affect people. Healers are often considered “guardians of nature” and “guardians of community well-being” (see, for example, Hoff 2011). The vast majority of societies in Africa that were defined as hunter-gatherers today get at least some of their food and income from non-foraging activities, including craft production and sale, market exchange of wild meat and medicinal plants, and items such as red ochre. In a number of African countries, foragers are able to benefit from government programs such as ones that provide drought relief or assistance to people defined as destitutes, the ultra-poor, or are to people affected by disasters or forced relocation. They also get transfers from other people, sometimes relatives, members of other groups, the state, non-government, or faith-based organizations. Contact with outside agencies may or may not influence the belief systems of hunter-gatherer societies, depending on the kinds of contacts that occur. Huntergatherers in Africa today tend to be syncretic in their approaches to religion, employing a variety of different religious systems to deal with issues that they are facing.

African Ritual Specialists as Healers and Medical Practitioners Shamans and traditional medical practitioners in African hunter-gatherer societies are involved with magico-religious practices that seek to cure individuals who are ill and, in some cases, to influence the universe. Unlike their agricultural and pastoral neighbors, hunter-gatherer healers do not generally employ negative magic (“witchcraft”) to harm other people (Guenther 1992). One possible reason for this feature is that African hunter-gatherer groups are relatively small in size, and it would be

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problematic to alienate one or more members of their groups by “bewitching” them. Characteristic features of southern African hunter-gatherer healers include going into trance and connecting with the supernatural, often during all-night dances (Lee 1968; Marshall 1969, 1999; Katz 1982; Katz et al. 1997). Some of these dances are done to get rid of sickness or bad feelings. Among the Ju/‘hoansi, there are trance dances in which trance healers run out of the firelight and curse the spirits of the dead (//gausi) who are believed to bring bad things, and they also speak fiercely to lions even if there are none in the vicinity. As Katz et al. (1997:24) note, sometimes Ju/‘hoan healers transform themselves into lions; that way they can travel farther and faster through the air (a process known as jumm) to other places and assess the illness or well-being of relatives and friends. Turning into lions is a feature common to a number of different San societies, and this ability is sometimes used to play tricks on other people (Katz et al. 1997:24–250. Lions are seen both as benevolent and as dangerous; on the rare occasions when a lion attacks a Ju’hoan, it is assumed that the attacker is a human curer turned into a lion (Marshall 1999:238). Shape-shifting is not an uncommon strategy among African hunter-gatherer healers; this process of transmogrification, as it is known, allows healers to do things as animals that they cannot do as humans. In Lesotho and South Africa, AmaThole San ritual specialists sometimes sought to become elands (Taurotragus oryx) which are viewed by them as important “rain animals” (Challis et al. 2013; Hitchcock, field data, 2019). Rituals involving elands are similar in both the northern and southern Kalahari (Lewis Williams and Biesele 1978). Therianthropes, human–animal combinations often seen in southern African rock art, are important representations of San shamans (Guenther 2020a:172). Many San say that the rock art created in southern Africa was done in part by shamans, but that it also had practical importance, such as hunting magic and demonstrating historic events (see Hitchcock 2019; Solomon 2013, 2017, 2019).

African Ritual Specialists and Supernatural Gamekeepers One of the questions that arises is whether or not African hunter-gatherer shamans maintain relationships with some type of “supernatural gamekeeper” like those mentioned throughout this volume. The answer to this question is yes. For example, among the Basua of the southern Congo, the supernatural gamekeeper is known as Kalisia. “The buffalo, which the Basua hunt, can only be killed with Kalisia’s expressed permission, which is indicated by a divinatory forked sacrificial stick. . .” (Slotten 1966:58). For the Ituri foragers of Gabon, “the Master of Animals is conceived as a guide [named Gor]. Gor guides the elephants on their way, and the animal path through the forest is to be taken by the hunters” (Slotten 1966:58).1 The

It should be noted that the “Pygmies” of Gabon who Slotten refers to as “Ituri” are in fact Baka, Bakoya, and Bobongo.

1

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San of the eastern Kalahari believe that Huwe (also known as Dzimo and Thora, “is a good spirit who protects from disease, bestows plenty, and guards men in situations of danger. . .They look to him for hunting luck. He receives praise after a successful chase” (Slotten 1966:71). Additionally, some African shamans do perform rituals aimed at increasing game numbers; others, such as the Haddad of Chad, do not mention that the rituals are aimed at promoting wildlife numbers for hunting purposes (Ida Nicolaisen, personal communication, 2010; see Nicolaisen 2000, 2010). The Haddad Kreda and Haddad Kanembu did employ hunting magic in order to increase their chances of getting prey. There were some differences between the two groups in terms of the kinds of hunting magic that they employed (Nicolaisen 2010:40–41, 218–63, 274–278). Poison was used in hunting by both Haddad groups (Nicolaisen 2010:139, 229–233). Hunter-gatherer groups in southern Somalia such as the Eyle say that they engage in “hunting magic” in order to improve their chances of obtaining prey. This is also true for the Boni of the Somali-Kenya borderlands (Daniel Stiles, personal communication, 1980, 1993). Among the Tshwa of northeastern Botswana and western Zimbabwe, there are specialized hunters known as káè-tcá-bá-tcò, sometimes called dzimba, who have extensive bush knowledge and who sometimes serve as hunt leaders in long-distance hunts (Hitchcock 1982, 1988). It is interesting to note the interactions between huntleaders and Tshwa shamans and healers (tʃóò- khòè, plural: tʃóò-rà, also referred to as cho k’ao) which are complex, and which are sometimes cooperative and at other times competitive. In virtually all African hunter-gatherer societies, traditional healers are occupational specialists. They are often highly influential and generally they seek to obtain public consensus. Some healers have visions or dreams that lead them to become healers; there are also numerous cases in Africa where healers take on apprenctices, sharing their secret knowledge with younger individuals. They generally have extensive interactions with animals either through direct contact or through becoming animals themselves (at least in a supernatural sense). Some healers do warn their community members that they are overexploiting their resources, actions that they say will bring harm to the society. It is useful to examine the belief systems of one San group in southern Africa who are known to be effective hunters, the G/ui of the Central Kalahari region of Botswana. Among the G/ui, theology is central to their world view, and this theology articulates their diverse areas of knowledge and belief, their values, the structure of their logic in a coherent whole (Silberbauer 1981:51). According to Silberbauer’s assessment of the G/ui belief system, A being, N!adima, created the fabric of the universe and the prototypical specimens of all life-forms. He and his wife N!adisa, live in an upper region of a three-tiered universe, above the visible sky. N!adima is the supreme being in the universe—creator and owner but the only being that is not subject to the will of another (Silberbauer 1981:52). It is interesting to note that among the G/ui there is a belief that the gods are all vegetarian, that is, they do not kill animals to eat. G/ui accept that they cannot communicate directly with N!adima, “and they have no prayers, incantations,

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worship, sacrifices or acts of celebration and praise aimed at influencing N!adima” (Silberbauer 1981:53–54). Another being in the G/ui universe is known as G// amama, who is an evil, invisible presence that is ubiquitous. This being can unleash small showers of arrows to lodge in people, especially women, and cause them problems and pain. According to Silberbauer (1981:54–55) and G/ui informants in New Xade, Botswana, the G/ui have developed a set of countermeasures to cops with G//amama’s evil deeds, including dances and specialized kinds of medicines. Most G/ui healers have a variety of skills, including abilities to go into trance, to turn into animals such as lions, to find and use medicinal plants, to lay hands on people who are ill, and to “suck out” the object that is causing the difficulty which may be a feather, a small arrow, or a stone. G/ui maintain that they do not engage in divination, the seeking of hidden knowledge through the performance of magicoreligious rituals. Tshwa healers, on the other hand, do claim that they can obtain hidden knowledge through “throwing the bones.” Among African hunter-gatherers in general, those who are dead physically are also dead socially; there are no attempts to venerate the dead; in other words, among African hunter-gatherers there is no “ancestor worship.” Both dances and medicines provide a means of defense against evil. There are cases among the Batwa of central Africa where dances are performed, and medicines used which are geared toward coping with “evil spirits in the forest.” Many of the rituals performed are aimed at promoting social harmony.

Conclusions The belief in supernatural gamekeepers by African foraging peoples may serve to prevent the depletion of wildlife populations. For example, traditional healers are believed to maintain relationships with local supernatural gamekeepers and with the game animals themselves. Such foraging ritual specialists are also believed to possess the ability to transform themselves into animals and, most importantly, they warn fellow community members that the overharvesting of local resources will bring harm to the society. Thus, this form of TEK serves to prevent environmental degradation. African hunter-gatherer healers, shapeshifters, and “medicine people” employ a variety of strategies to deal with adversity and to interact with the supernatural. These strategies range from engaging in dances which lead individuals into trance and applying herbal medicines to people who have been wounded or are ill. While some African shamans claim to be able to cure HIV/AIDS and Ebola, there is no evidence to suggest that this has occurred. They have, however, been credited with bringing rain to drought-stricken areas, and to performing rituals that have led to an increase in plants and animals that are valuable to indigenous communities. They generally have extensive indigenous knowledge which is of significance not only to themselves but also agencies such as pharmaceutical companies. The use by Nama and San of plants such as Hoodia gordonii to allay hunger and thirst has led to private companies such as Pfizer in the past to try and domesticate the plant and to

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capture its pharmaceutical value, an effort which has been unsuccessful. This has not stopped the Hoodia Growers Association in South Africa from continuing to produce the plant (Wynberg et al. 2009). African hunter-gatherer religious practitioners share the desire to maintain an environment that is productive and sustainable for use by people, much in the same way as shamans do in other parts of the world. While many of them live in egalitarian societies that today are being buffeted by climate change, globalization, and disease, they continue to seek out measures to cope with the challenges their societies are facing, the most recent of which is COVID-19. The mortality rates of San in southern Africa from COVID-19 are extremely low; when asked why this is the case, some people maintain that it is because they are engaging in defensive measures such as the use of facemasks and social distancing. There are also those who say that they have sought out traditional medical practitioners who have shown them various kinds of medicines “in far away places” distant from villages which have enabled them to avoid getting COVID-19. It should also be noted that their seeking isolated places may also have contributed to their low infection and mortality rates. Some San argue that they wish to be vaccinated, and the vaccination rates are on the increase in southern Africa, though in cases like Botswana and Namibia the vaccination rate is still below 20% (Centers for Disease Control—CDC—data, 2021). Interviews of individual San via Zoom and Whats App indicate that the COVID 19 pandemic has led to an increase in interest in both traditional and scientific medicine. A few individuals say that they are engaging in the use of both kinds of medicine. “Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is very important to us,” one Nharo woman said; she went on to say, “Without this knowledge, we would be having a much harder time in this pandemic.” She added, we wish that our “medicine people” could help alleviate hunger for us. Like South American, European, and Asian indigenous medical practitioners, African healers are looked to for their myriad skills, knowledge, and abilities. While they are not always successful in coping with large-scale problems such as climate change and disease, they do a great deal to assist individuals and communities and help maintain social harmony, which is very much needed in the current sociopolitical and socioeconomic environment in Africa. Acknowledgments Support of some of the research upon which this paper is based was provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation (grant BCS 1122932), Brot für die Welt (Project No. 2013 0148 G), the Millennium Challenge-Account-Namibia (MCA-N) (Grant No. MCC-08-011-1AA94), the National Geographic Society (Grant No # NGS-181R-18), and the U.S Department of State (Namibia) Grant No. SWA80018GR0028. I wish to acknowledge the enormous assistance I received from Tsamkxao ≠Oma, Leon Tsamkxao, Txamkxao Cique, Richard J. Chacon, Melinda Kelly, Megan Biesele, Richard Lee, Anne-Maria Fehn, Davy Ndlovu, Ben Begbie-Clench, Lee Pratchett, Matthias Guenther, Chris Low, Smith Moeti, Masego Nkelekang, Roy Sesana, Taole Tesele, Maria Sapignoli, Anne Solomon, Jumanda Gakelebone, the late Alec Campbell, the late James Pritchett, the late Lorna Marshall, the late George Silberbauer, the late Gakemodimo Mosi, the late/Kunta Bo, and the late Nkelekang Tsmeru of Manxotae, Botswana.

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References Barnard, Alan. 1979. Nharo Bushman Medicine and Medicine Men. Africa 49: 68–80. Beckwith, Carol, and Angela Fisher. 1999a. African Ceremonies. Vol. I. New York: Harry N. Abrams. ———. 1999b. African Ceremonies. Vol. II. New York: Harry N. Abrams. Biesele, Megan. 1975. Folklore and Ritual among !Kung Hunter-Gatherers. Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. ———. 1978. Religion and Folklore. In The Bushmen: San Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa, ed. Phillip V. Tobias, 162–172. Cape Town: Human and Rousseau. Challis, Sam (2008) The Impact of the Horse on the AmaTola ‘Bushmen’” New Identity in the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains of Southern Africa. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 44(1):156-157. Challis, Sam, Jeremy Hollman, and Mark McGranahan. 2013. ‘Rain Snakes’ from the Senqu River: New Light on Qing’s Commentary on San Rock Art from Sehongong, Lesotho. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 48 (3): 331–354. Guenther, M.G. 1992. “Not a Bushman Thing”: Witchcraft among Bushmen and Hunter-Gatherers. Anthropos 87: 83–107. Guenther, Mathias G. 2000. Tricksters and Trancers: Bushman Religion and Society. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Guenther, Matthias. 2020a. Human-Animal Relationships in San Hunter-Gatherer Cosmology, Volume I: Therianthropes and Transformation. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2020b. Human-Animal Relationships in San Hunter-Gatherer Cosmology, Volume II: Imagining and Experiencing Ontological Mutability. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hames, Raymond B. 2007. The Ecologically Noble Savage Debate. Annual Reviews of Anthropology 36: 177–190. Hammond-Tooke, W.D. 1989. Rituals and Medicines: Indigenous Healing in South Africa. Johannesburg: AD. Donker Publishers. Heinz, H.-J. 1975. Elements of !Ko Bushmen Religious Beliefs. Anthropos 70: 17–41. Hitchcock, Robert K. 1982. IThe Ethnoarchaeology of Sedentism: Mobility Strategies and Site Structure among Foraging and Food Producing Populations in the Eastern Kalahari Desert, Botswana. PhD dissertation, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. New Mexico. Hitchcock, Robert K. 1988. Settlement, Seasonality, and Subsistence Stress among the Tyua of Northern Botswana. In: Coping with Seasonal Constraints, Rebecca Huss-Ashmore, ed., with Robert K. Hitchcock and John J. Curry. pp. 64–85. Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania. Hitchcock, Robert K. 2019. The Evolution of Hunter-Gatherer Religion: Issues and Debates among the San Bushmen of Southern Africa. In The Evolution of Religion, Religiosity, and Theology: A Multi-level and Multidisciplinary Approach, ed. Jay R. Feierman and Lluis Oviedo, 239–255. New York: Routledge. Hoff, Ansie. 2011. Guardians of Nature Among the/Xam San: An Exploratory Study. South African Archaeological Bulletin 66: 41–50. Katz, Richard. 1982. Boiling Energy: Community Healing among the Kalahari !Kung. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Katz, Richard, Megan Biesele, Verna St, and Denis. 1997. Healing Makes Our Hearts Happy: Spirituality and Cultural Transformation among the Kalahari Ju/’hoansi. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions. Lee, Richard B. 1968. The Sociology of !Kung Bushman Trance Performances. In Trance and Possession States, ed. R. Prince, 35–54. Montreal: Bucke Memorial Society. Lewis Williams, J. David, and Megan Biesele. 1978. Eland Hunting Rituals among Northern and Southern San Groups: Striking Similarities. Africa 48 (2): 117–134. Low, Chris. 2008. Khoisan Medicine in History and Practice. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. Marshall, Lorna. 1957. N/ow. Africa 27 (3): 232–240.

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———. 1962. !Kung Bushman Religious Beliefs. Africa 32 (3): 221–252. ———. 1969. The Medicine Dance of the !Kung Bushmen. Africa 39 (4): 347–381. ———. 1976. The !Kung of Nyae Nyae. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 1999. Nyae Nyae !Kung:Beliefs and Rites. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum Monographs. Nicolaisen, Ida. 2000. The Haddad of Chad. Indigenous Affairs 2000 (02): 26–31. ———. 2010. Elusive Hunters: The Haddad of Karem and the Bar el Ghazal. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Olivero, J., J.E. Fa, M.A. Farfán, J. Lewis, B. Hewlett, and T. Breuer. 2016. Distribution and Numbers of Pygmies in Central African Forests. PLoS One 11 (1): e0144499. https://doi.org/10. 1371/journal.pone.0144499. Peoples, Hervey C., and Frank W. Marlowe. 2012. Subsistence and the Evolution of Religion. Human Nature 23 (3): 253–269. Peoples, Hervey C., Pavel Duda, and Frank W. Marlowe. 2016. Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion. Human Nature 27: 261–282. Silberbauer, George B. (1981) Hunter and Habitat in the Central Kalahari. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Slotten, Ralph C. 1966. The Master of Animals: A Study in the Symbolism of Hunting Religion. PhD Dissertation, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL. Smith, E.A., and M. Wishnie. 2000. Conservation and Subsistence in Small-scale Societies. Annual Review of Anthropology 29: 493–524. Solomon, Anne. 2013. The Death of Trance: Recent Perspectives on San Ethnographies and Rock Arts. Antiquity 87: 1208–1213. ———. 2017. Rock Arts, Shamans, and Grand Theories. In The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art, ed. Bruno David and Ian J. McNiven. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2019. Bones, Pigments, Art, and Symbols: Archaeological Evidence for the Origins of Religion. In The Evolution of Religion, Religiosity, and Theology: A Multi-level and Multidisciplinary Approach, ed. Jay R. Feierman and Lluis Oviedo, 256–270. New York: Routledge. Stiles, Daniel (1980) Origins of the Hunting People of the North East African Coast. Transafrican Journal of History 9(1):52–69. Stiles, Daniel (1993) The Past and Present of Hunter-Gatherers in Kenya. Kenya Past and Present 25:39–45. Turner, Victor W. 1967. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Turner, Jonathan H., Alexandra Maryanski, Anders Klostergaard Petersen, and Armin W. Geertz. 2018. The Emergence of Religion by Means of Natural Selection. London and New York: Routledge. Wright, John. 1971. Bushman Raiders of the Drakensberg, 1840–1870. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press. Wright, John, and Aron Mazel. 2007. Tracks in a Mountain Range: Exploring the History of the Ukhahlamba-Drakensberg. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. Wynberg, Rachel, Doris Schroeder, and Roger Chennells, eds. 2009. Indigenous Peoples, Consent, and Benefit Sharing: Lessons from the San-Hoodia Case. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, and New York: Springer.

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Dr. Robert K. Hitchcock is a professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico and is a core faculty member in the Center for Global Change and Earth Observations (CGCEO) at Michigan State University. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Kalahari Peoples Fund (KPF). He has spent nearly 50 years working among San groups in several southern African countries. His areas of specialization include indigenous peoples, human rights, resettlement impacts, genocide, and development in sub-Saharan Africa.

Chapter 8

Holy Enforcers: St. Cuthbert and St. Hubert as Modern Icons of Conservation Peggy L. Eppig

Abstract A religious and spiritual lineage of supernatural gamekeeping is traced from the modern versions of conservation Saints Cuthbert and Hubert (Hubertus) back through Medieval Christian and pre-Christian applications of sanctions, restraint, and enforcement of wildlife and land-use regulation. The natural and cultural landscapes of coastal Northumbria and deep forests of the Ardenne, in association with iconic wildlife such as deer, otter, salmon, and seabirds, have played pivotal roles in preserving and promoting reverence for these Nature Saints (Wild, International Union for Nature and Natural Resources, Taylor and Francis Publishers, London, 2010). Embedded even in modern visages of these Dark Ages saints are ancient spiritual values of wild animals in relation to man. Celtic deities such as the Great Stag, personified as Cernunnos the shaman, Master of Animals, and animal knowledge traditions associated with the Salmon, Keeper of Wisdom and Otter, messenger to the Underworld are continued as animal companions to the saints in centuries-old and modern depictions of Hubert and Cuthbert. These transformative and repurposed supernatural gamekeepers take on even more important roles in the Anthropocene as we face increased environmental problems in habitat and biodiversity loss that require ethical and scientific conservation solutions. Keywords Supernatural Gamekeeper · Animal Master · St. Cuthbert · St. Hubertus · Conservation · Syncretism · Cernunnos · Ecological pilgrimage · Conservation saints

Introduction In this chapter, I take an environmental-historical approach to explore the evolution of the mystical influences of two Western saints of the Dark Ages. Saints Cuthbert, 634–687 AD, and Hubert, 656–727 AD, whose enduring legacies serve as revered supernatural guardians of wild lands and wildlife and enforcers of a land ethic

P. L. Eppig (✉) Goucher College, Delta, PA, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. J. Chacon (ed.), The History and Environmental Impacts of Hunting Deities, Conflict, Environment, and Social Complexity 4, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37503-3_8

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(Leopold 1949:204). Both serve as contemporary spiritual wardens/supernatural gamekeepers who come into an era where they may serve best as new saints of the Anthropocene.1 I suggest that a revival of the symbolic and mystical values of these two saints reflect important shifts in man’s relationship to environment. Today, many Christian saints can be associated through faith, culture, and science with modern environmental concerns in both Eastern and Western traditions. I use Cuthbert and Hubert as examples of a repurposing of saints who have mystical bearing on contemporary environmental issues. St. Francis of Assisi is both a powerful symbol and charismatic personality to promote nature appreciation. He is patron saint of the modern science of ecology, a field of inquiry that studies the interconnectedness of biotic and abiotic realms. The spiritual domain of St. Herman of Alaska has evolved from eighteenth century protector of the indigenous Aleut against the abuses of Russian traders, to extend to all Alaskan native people who have come under rapid environmental change of boreal, sub-arctic, and tundra lands. There are many others, but St. Cuthbert and St. Hubert have survived into the twenty-first century as holy enforcers of conservation (Robert 2011:123–129). Cuthbert and Hubert take on more critical roles. Their influence over conservation decision making is grounded in the conviction of ethics underpinned by sanctions. Compared to contemporary adorations of gentle St. Francis, these saints demand respect and require adherence to strict codes of game-taking and land management which, if disregarded, may result loss of human privilege as members of an ecological society, Creation. In modern devotional imagery, Saints Cuthbert and Hubert lord over their respective landscapes in companionship with undomesticated beasts. They co-occupy the dangerous spaces of dark forest and desolate coast with creatures who possess deep mythological connections to cultures that pre-dated the coming of Christianity. Their origin stories contain representations of biblical persona overlapped with barely veiled Celtic deities reimagined as their nonhuman attendants and who characterize our wilder selves and histories. Cernunnos, a pre-Romano Celtic supernatural gamekeeper associated with forest stewardship, fertility, and wild animals, appears before young hunter, Hubert the Pagan, and initiates his conversion experience to Christianity. “As he was pursuing a magnificent stag, the animal turned and Hubert was astounded to see a vision of a crucifix standing between its antlers,” recounts the telling of the legend by the International Order of Saint Hubertus (2022).2 The animals are “good to think with” and offer interpretations of Cuthbert and Hubert transformed as protectors. Environmental and 1

Steffen et al. (2007) develop the concept of Anthropocene to include prolonged industrial, sociopolitical, and economic activities that have significant human-caused global geologic, marine, and atmospheric consequences for the future life on earth. This activity has resulted in the current geo-biological period known as the Sixth Great Extinction; the effect of intense environmental change brought about by human activity with dire outcomes for biodiversity at planetary scale. 2 See the webpage International Order of Saint Hubertus (IOSH 2022) for the complete account of the Hubertus legends: https://www.iosh-usa.com/about-us/history-of-st-hubertus

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animal histories associated with them become important to decipher the rationale for shifting attitudes toward nature and the need its protection.3

Thinking with the Animals The saint’s legend is a biographical narrative, of whatever circumstances may dictate, written in whatever medium may be convenient, concerned with the life, death, and miracles of some person accounted worthy to be considered a leader in the cause of righteousness and, whether fictitious or historically true, calculated to glorify the memory of its subject.— Gordon Hall Gerould, Saints Legends, 1916.

Animals of the Celtic menagerie figure prominently throughout the earliest accounts of the life of St. Cuthbert. While legendary saints’ lives literature is often disparaged for its fanciful fictions of Church history, the animal tales do provide a rich interpretive framework that offer a glimpse into environmental conditions of the time. As Dark Ages archetypes of the Holy Guardian, the tales of Cuthbert and Hubert enfold the scientific story of environmental loss and restoration. “Mythic stories are not stories created by a primitive-minded people to explain natural phenomena before the advent of science. They are stories expressing the vast forces that lie behind these phenomena” (Strauss 1996:22–23). From the earliest surviving vitae, biographical life of saints, are Venerable St. Bede’s Vita Sancti Cuthberti, c. 716 AD (Webb 1965), based upon seven manuscripts written by an anonymous monk-biographer, contemporary if not attendant to the elder bishop and hermit Cuthbert (McManners 2008; Webb 1965). Throughout Bede’s eighth-century vitae, domestic and wild animals anchor tales of miracles that elicit astonishments from listeners and readers. Cuthbert’s beloved horse, his faithful companion, is aligned with the Celtic equine heroine Epona and reflects the courage and intelligence of her owner (Green 1992:210). The eagle which saves Cuthbert and a young monk from the maws of a terrible winter storm links directly to the eagle as Celtic sun-god, offering hope in the darkness (Green 1992:173). The tales are synchronized with pagan folklore motifs of the hero’s journey. In their telling, one is drawn into a sophisticated interwoven world beyond our own, making animal encounters accessible and legendary and entirely plausible. Long before Bede put stylus to calfskin vellum, the Cuthbert tales had been a source of oral storytelling entertainment that reinforced the righteous life. Given that actual events were witnessed and recorded shortly after his death, these stories were

3

Ditchfield (2009) tracks shifting perceptions, narratives, and uses of Western saints through history with analysis of the development of representational art and sacred imagery that reflects changes in society and science. His essay title is a play on Stuart Clark’s Thinking with Demons (1999) and demonology as a lens to explore evolutions of contemporary issues. Ditchfield states that Claude Levi-Strauss in Totemism (1963) “found it helpful to understand the role of animals in totemism by acknowledging that they were chosen not because they were ‘good to eat’ but because they were ‘good to think’ with” (Ditchfield 2009:552–553).

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shared as factual teachings among men and women religious. The animals of the vitae play important roles and people, farmers, herdsmen, and fishermen outside the abbeys and convents had deep ecological knowledge of their habitats. Cuthbert defined the semi-wild north (Adam 1993). Cuthbert’s habit of devotional night bathing in the cold North Sea made his companions fear for his life. The night sea represented the dark unknown, a domain of demons and malevolence. A story tells of a monk hidden among some kelpcovered rocks who watched astounded as Cuthbert stood in lashing winds, neck deep in pounding surf, shouting his prayers. Emerging hours later and exhausted, nearly frozen, and naked on the shore, the observing monk gasped when from the sea came two otters who wove playfully, lovingly, around Cuthbert’s feet and legs to warm and dry him. He was later soothed and reassured by Cuthbert, who asked him not to tell the story until after his passing, which may identify the anonymous monk who authored the seven manuscripts that inspired Bede’s written transmission of the tales (McManners 2008). Transcribed and recorded, the stories become passionate fact (Strauss 1996:56–60). During a stormy crossing of a Northumbrian mountain pass and with little food to sustain them on their quest, Cuthbert’s companion, a young monk, cried out in fear. Cuthbert assured the novice that nature would provide through God’s merciful grace. An eagle appeared and dropped a fresh-caught salmon at their feet. The novice, driven by hunger, rushed to claim the fish but Cuthbert restrained him, saying “Divide the salmon and leave the larger portion for the eagle” (Adam 1993:54). Cuthbert stashed the half-fish in the fold of his winter cloak and climbed quickly higher and deeper into storm (McManners 2008:25). The young monk, nearly beside himself was angry in disbelief. “Have faith,” Cuthbert said, and to the novice’s surprise the home of a family of shepherds appeared through the driving snow (Adam 1993:54). They were nonbelievers, pagan Celts, cried the young monk. Yet Cuthbert knocked and was welcomed inside where the fish was added to a fine stew bubbling near the hearth. The pagans and the men of God shared a happy feast, safe and warm, in good company “whilst Cuthbert preached to them the word of God and blessed Him for his mercies” (Webb 1965:58–59). The Christian eagle is cousin to the Romano-Celtic sky-god, a protector who swoops down from celestial heights to resurrect flagging spirits and feed frightened souls, whose appearance recalls Isaiah of the Old Testament, “for those long awaiting the Word of God should have their strength renewed, carried on the wings of eagles, and shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (King James Version: Book of Isaiah, verses 30–31). The Christian fish ichthys is placed into the forged cauldron to mix knowledge traditions of Salmon as Keeper of Wisdom, one of the oldest Celtic legendary beings, and Christ the Savior (Green 1992:190–192). The Celtic otter denotes one who crosses boundaries to bring comfort and bridge cultures. Irish missionaries who brought Celtic-Christianity to the North Sea coast believed that the otter had supernatural powers and they appeared frequently in the early accounts of Irish saints’ lives (Syse 2013:542–543). The iconic raven, intelligent and obedient to Cuthbert on his island hermitage, is less warlike in Celtic lore than the Germanic

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legendary divinities, yet it links Cuthbert to both the Saxon and Celtic traditions of animals as companions and advisors (McManners 2008:41–43). “The way Cuthbert interacts with the animals further reveals the saint’s blessed position in creation” (Adam 1993:71). It passes easily from the Underworld to the World of Man and creates discourse between Christian and pre-Christian worlds. Cuthbert, as described by Bede and storytellers who followed, was established as a regional hero-saint (Ditchfield 2009 :34). By the time of Bede’s Vita Sancti Cuthberti, around 721 A.D. (Webb 1965), a powerful Christian cult had already developed around the memory and legacy of St. Cuthbert. The cult projected both political power and religious influence throughout Northumbria. The cult of Cuthbert had enshrined him as patron saint of the North. An influencer of his day, the monk and scribe, later Bishop of Lindisfarne, Eadfrith, created the beautiful Lindisfarne Gospels to commemorate Cuthbert’s life and death (Backhouse 2014:12–14). An exquisitely decorated illuminated manuscript, it was created in the intricate interlace style and its brilliantly colored pages literally wriggle and swim with animal imagery. Though stylized, the abundance of animal forms reinforces the importance of Creation embedded in Cuthbert’s legacy. The northern environment, whether portrayed as sea creatures, furred or feathered beings, are central to understanding the natural and spiritual world beloved by Cuthbert. “The Celts maintained a vital spiritual and artistic presence among the Saxons which is still visible in the fantastic knot work and calligraphy of the Lindisfarne Gospels which were completed just after Cuthbert’s death. Contorted animals wind themselves about the gospel texts in the same way that they had earlier adorned pagan altars and pre-Christian decorative wares. These were some of the most readily adaptable pagan motifs since, as creatures of the One True God, they could be used to reveal the Creator’s works or to test men” (Ditchfield 2009 :38). At the time the elder Cuthbert was living his last years in hermitage on the rocky island of Inner Farne, Continental son of nobles Hubert of Aquitaine experienced a powerful vision which inspired his conversion to Christianity. Hunting in the Ardennes on Good Friday, much to the chagrin of local Christian priests, Hubert witnessed a great white stag that appeared in a clearing well within range of an arrow shot. Magically the stag carried a gleaming crucifix floating in the basket of its antlers and, according to legend, the sight of it mesmerized Hubert. The vision as represented in Christian iconography throughout northern France and Germany conveys the importance of the stag deity even as it was claimed for the Church (Goderdzishvili 2018:148–153).4 In pagan imagery, the stag or antler-headed shaman represented fertility and rebirth. The stag conveyed supernatural powers to regulate or proliferate certain game animals as well as human capabilities to hunt them. Like branches and roots of the Tree of Life motif common in many Celtic designs, the antlers of the stag were depicted as intricately branched, basket-like, often holding objects or symbols of

4

See the excellent selection of Christian iconography that features St. Hubert’s vision experience in Goderdzishvili (2018:167–169).

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light. Antlered skull caps of hunted deer were fashioned into head dresses worn by shamans. Images of the Great Stag are found on all manner of Iron Age grave goods, including household items like bowls and flagons, implements of warfare such as armor and weaponry, and on high status objects such as broches and jewelry, even coins. Among a vast assemblage of animal depictions found throughout Celtic pre-Roman world, iconography of the stag and antlered man are abundant (Bober 1951:18–19). “The stag is of considerable antiquity in the Celtic or proto-Celtic world. For hunters, the stag with its tree-like antlers represented the spirit of the forest; its agility, speed and sexual vigour were admired, and there was mystery in the autumn shedding and regrowth of the antlers in the spring, which could easily symbolise seasonal death and rebirth. . .[supernatural gamekeeper] Cernunnos is lord of nature, of beasts, fruit, corn and even plenty as symbolized by money” (Green 1992:45–52). The storyline of stag-induced visions would have been a familiar one to pre-Christian Celts of the Bronze and Iron Age. The importance of supernatural elements associated with the Great Stag was critical to the experience and interpretation of spiritual encounters between daily and religious life. Zoomorphic imagery found on the Romano-Celtic second century B.C. The Gundestrup Cauldron in Denmark depicts the light-emitting space between a companion stag’s antlers and the antlered headdress of Cernunnos, a powerful Celtic deity of birth and rebirth and revered Lord of Animals (Bober 1951:14–15). The light-emitting object whether crucifix or an object from nature afloat within the antlered space may have denoted the presence of an oracle or a form of communication with the spirit world, a world depicted by Cernunnos on the Gundestrup Cauldron, in statuary, and rock art across Celtic regions as surrounded by a menagerie of creatures that represented the supernatural domain of the stag-god (Green 1992:150–151). Precise religious and social functions attributed to the Great Stag as one member of the crowded pantheon of Celtic gods can be troublesome, but interpretations of Cernunnos, the transformed Romano-Celtic deity, are consistent as Master of Animals across the Romano-Celtic world (Green 1986:196–7). The occurrence of Hubert’s vision is a good example of Christian symbolic imagery overlaid upon older Celtic mythology using the Great Stag, the Holy Spirit, adorned with the crucifix of Christ, Lord of Man. Hubert’s storied encounter was not the first to endorse conversion to Christianity through the Celtic stag imagery, however. Hubert’s conversion story was originally assigned to St. Eustace, a second century Christian convert and martyr, who encountered a large stag while hunting, whose immense antlers glowed with the golden light of a shimmering crucifix floating between them (Gerauld 1916:36; Goderdzishvili 2018:150–153). In the early Middle Ages, the story was given over to St. Hubert, whose feast day coincided with the pagan autumn hunting festivals and thus he was assigned as patron of hunters. “It may have been for this reason that in 835 [Hubert’s] body was transferred to the Ardennes, where he evidently succeeded a pagan deity, possibly Woden. In the eleventh century, the first results of each year’s hunt were laid on his altar” (Newell 1889:165). By the end of the eleventh century, the image Hubert as saint and patron of hunters and game animals was firmly established as an icon of

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Church history with the cult-iconography of Cernunnos and the Great Stag serving as ancestral ties to pre-Christian culture (Green 1998:27). The imagery of the Great Stag endures in Christian iconography as well. Powerful and persistent, Cernunnos and the Great Stag were turned to servants of the Church. Each was transformed to the embodiment of Christian abundance and everlasting life. With this, St. Hubert was promoted to a position of early Medieval mystical gamekeeper, a formidable enforcer of rules that governed ethical hunting among his kind, the nobles and kings of Northern Europe. St. Hubert the Convert assumed a princely role among royalty who imagined him as a holy knight born a pagan, convinced by his transformative vision that there could be no abundance without discipline and restraint.

Holy Enforcers Some Early Medieval cults of Western saints hoisted their figureheads higher than others in bids to inspire strategic allegiances and to build militaries. A powerful connection between saint and followers could help exert socio-political influence. By 1100 AD, the Cult of St. Cuthbert was itself an influence in civil concerns and Church power. By the twelfth century, military orders were established under St. Hubert. He was revered as one of the Four Holy Marshals of the Rhineland, one of a group of powerful chivalric intercessors summoned up to counter epidemics and disease, a growing concern across Europe (D’Arcy 2000:605–609). The assigned roles of animal intercessors marked a serious environmental crisis as each Holy Marshal, assigned a specific animal and human malady, was venerated in hopes of protection and cure against plagues. St. Anthony was patron of the pig and intercessor of plague. St. Cornelius served as patron saint of cattle and intercessor of epilepsy. St. Quirin of Rome became patron saint of horses, intercessor of smallpox. St. Hubert, already firmly established as patron saint of human hunters and fishermen, became patron of hunting and working dogs, and intercessor of rabies (Rogerson 2013:229). The frequency and intensity of outbreaks of plague and other diseases suggest that large numbers of domestic animals living in close quarters to people and the associated host and vector pests (rats, fleas, and feral dogs) were, in ever growing and polluted urban centers, reservoirs for disease transmission. Add massive loss of livestock and human life, changes in climate triggered famine and cycles of plant disease. St. Hubert and his cohort of Holy Marshals were called upon to battle every pestilence and plague (Aberth 2013:206–217). The uses of saints reflected the needs of the day, and a new figure of Cuthbert was envisioned to help address serious concerns about the environment, land, and animals. Twelfth-century Benedictine monk and chronicler, Reginald of Durham Priory, composed in 1160, a collection of stories, Libellus de admirandis beati Cuthberti virtutibus (The Little Book of Wonderous Virtues of Blessed Cuthbert) as a response to rising worries about the degradation of natural resources and issues of justice (Hasseler 2012:13). Reginald’s concepts of sanctuary and refuge emerge as

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important additions to the sacred legacy of St. Cuthbert, who, in Reginald’s hagiography, had become a vengeful, justice-seeking saint (Crumplin 2004:218–227; Hasseler 2012:29–35). In vivid retellings of the life of the saint, Reginald added— some say manipulated—documentary on the importance of political and environmental “the right of refuge” (Hasseler 2012:24–25). Smith states, “Reginald’s use of specific place names emphasized centers of retreat that used the Scandinavian root words -lund and -lundr for sacred grove, refuge, and sanctuary to describe locations where the remains of St. Cuthbert were kept safe from the Danes. These place names evoke heathen religious associations in England [which] is very apt and now I think we may go further and say that lundr was in some cases a grove where right of sanctuary could be had” (Smith 1933:74–75). For the first time in the succession of Cuthbert tales, Reginald’s Libellus (1160) references the Common Eider, Somateria mollissima, as “St. Cuthbert’s birds” (McManners 2008:47). This augmented animal tale carries forward from twelfth century and credits the eider duck, claimed as Cuthbert’s favorite among all animals, for inspiring the saint to establish laws during his lifetime that protected coastal habitat and wild inhabitants from hunting and exploitation. The eider becomes central to the evolving symbolic imagery of St. Cuthbert as conservator and his rules serve as critical religious obligations to protect animals as a moral responsibility. Violation of the rules may invoke the feudal right to expel anyone not heading the saint, now overseer of the fiefdom, God’s creation.5 Reginald’s Libellus (1160) seals the legacy of Cuthbert as author of the first conservation laws and, though the saint never wrote or dictated any such law in his lifetime, the invented accreditation carries forward in story and art. Variations of Reginald’s conservation legend were amplified through the Late Middle Ages clear into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Goryashko 2020:75–77). St. Cuthbert’s presence over affairs of conservation was represented in stained glass windows, paintings, and popular literature and all give the impression of Cuthbert as supernatural caretaker/gamekeeper who lords over the land and its species with suggestions of enforced regulation. Folklorist Antone Minard (2016) suggests that the durability of Reginald’s invention of the eider’s protected status under Cuthbertine law hinted at the very real emergence of environmental concern during the chronicler’s time, signaling perhaps his own embarrassment for the Priory at Durham, site of Cuthbert’s final resting place and major northern pilgrimage center. According to church inventories, it was awash in riches that must have made the chronicler wince to have Cuthbert, so revered for his humility and simplicity, associated with such greed. More so, the impact of this greed of kings, nobles, and Church played out upon the land itself and must have been obvious to Reginald and others, and, hard to ignore (Goryashko 2020:67–69).

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Minard (2016) and Goryashko (2020) trace the origins of Cuthbertine-eider associations to Reginald while Crumplin (2004:218–220) focuses on Reginald’s manipulation of Cuthbert’s animal associations and miracles framed as a vengeful saint, a moral enforcer.

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As part of annual Durham Priory monastic property inventories through the twelfth century, monks living on and tending to St. Cuthbert’s hermitage on the island of Inner Farne, a busy pilgrimage center in its own right, noted that the great seabird rookeries, seal colonies, and fisheries of the island and coast were suffering under increased hunting and fishing pressures (Crumplin 2004:232–233). The previously ubiquitous eider, already overhunted for its eggs and meat, was harvested mostly for its down feathers used in making waterproof insulated garments and (a Church favorite), high loft down-filled comforters and seat cushions which appeared by the hundreds in Durham’s abbey and cathedral. Managers of the priory’s grange lands around Durham were reporting upon the state of lands and forests as increasingly expensive to maintain with reduced productivity due to degraded soils, deforestation, and livestock disease. These accounts, revealed in Durham’s inventories, illustrate immense material wealth as well as an everincreasing debt load as market demands reflected scarcity of highly valued natural resources such as eider down (Britnell 2014). Reginald’s manipulated teaching stories, based loosely upon ancient tales of Cuthbert’s life, reflected a call for moral response to harms done to natural and managed environments, all backed by the consequence of the saint’s authority (Hasseler 2012:41–42). Cuthbert assumed his role as conservation enforcer of conservation law at a time when the systematic elimination of wolves, wildcats, and salmon from most of Ireland, England, and Wales was well underway (Evans 1997:15). By the thirteenth century, however, the wilderness of Scotland remained the last holdout of important predators. Across the England and the Borders region, cranes, herons, coastal waterfowl, and small mammal species classified as “vermin” were on their way to extinction. Beaver and otter disappeared from interior wetlands and rivers. Intensified agricultural lands practices, forest exploitation, and the overlay of a changing climate and impact of near constant warfare doomed natural and semi-wild landscapes (Hoffman 1996:638). By the fourteenth century, the legacy and manifestations of St. Cuthbert as holy guardian and vengeful enforcer were employed with some effort to slow the unwise use of natural resources but with little or no real effect on land use practices or the protection of species. The influence of Reginald’s hagiographies to enforce Church power and the control of its local patron saints was losing ground (Crumplin 2004:256). By the fourteenth century, St. Hubert, positioned as patron saint of hunting, took on the added role of patron to fishermen and inland fisheries and this too was in response to observed changes in natural and human-built systems of fishery management, or lack thereof. Hoffman (1996:638) writes, “Replacement of woodlands with intensified arable agriculture changed basic hydrological conditions, both directly and by proliferation of water-powered grain mills. Rising human populations and their concentration into towns added nutrients and contaminants to water courses, while the demand for fish as food soared. As these effects accumulated in each region, freshwater fisheries visibly came under stress.” Royal and monastic responses to fisheries collapse included engineering elaborate hatchery and pond systems to raise bream, eel, pike, trout, carp, and even sturgeon to satisfy ever growing demands for fish as a major component of the

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medieval diet. Fishery pressures for obtaining wild-caught fish demanded new ethical codes for how and when to harvest and these gave rise to fishing clubs and associations under the patronage of St. Hubert and St. Albans (Aberth 2013:204–205). St. Hubert’s holy presence was invoked to address the collapse of estuarine systems subject to frequent and heavy flooding. Considered immoral and offensive, river systems inundated with human waste and animal offal flowed after heavy rainfall from heavily populated urban centers and polluted fragile coastal fisheries. In such manner were productive natural hatcheries drowning in waste and silt (Hoffman 1996:643). Reviving the authority of St. Hubert as regulator of an ethical response to these situations described as “piteous and grievous sights” was a small but effective effort (Galloway 2010:3–4). Remarkably, a scattering of St. Hubert’s fishing societies survives in the U.S. today in the form of recreational clubs with historic ties to northern European immigrant communities experiencing a modern revival as environmental concerns about cold water fisheries intensify around issues of access, climate change, and pollution see St. Hubert’s Hunting and Fishing Club of Masbeth (2022).6 Elements of environmental protest signaled concern. Reginald wrote a biography of his friend Godric of Finchale Priory and noted that the hermit-saint took great pains to hide stags from “the plunderers” of organized royal deer drives (Aberth 2013:205). Godric, who lived in a small monastic cell in the woods downstream from Durham, was active in providing sanctuary and medical care to animals wounded in hunts (Waddell 1949:78–90). Reginald tied Godric’s conscientious objection to animal cruelty directly to his veneration of St. Cuthbert, a form of social protest associated with religious piety and the beginnings of animal rights recognition emerging in the Middle Ages (Evans 1997:205). Godric freed hares from snares, and otters from submerged body traps. He sheltered quail and doves away from falconers. “So popular were falconry hunts that it took a full year for prey species to recover,” writes Evans (1997:14–19). Animal rights activism under the guise of piety had taken note of the impact of organized sport hunting. The destruction of animal life and habitat was comparable to large-scale landscape changes wrought by intensive farming and if not eliminated populations of game animals outright, organized hunting concentrated game in ever-shrinking patches marginal forest land (Aberth 2013:205). In the scriptorium, illuminators added humorous and grotesque side notes to their manuscripts, predicting the topsy-turvy world to come where hunting hares pursued humans and wild boar made trophies of their human hunter’s heads. Nature will seek

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See the Polish-American ethnic community of Queens, New York, the St. Hubert’s Hunting and Fishing Club of Masbeth which states in an updated mission that they are “. . .organized to conserve, restore, and manage wild game, fish and other wildlife and to improve the habitat and environment on club owned and/or leased properties; to seek to improve and better fishing and hunting opportunities for sportsmen; to promote and maintain friendly relations with landowners, sportsmen and the community; and to provide information and education about hunting and fishing to club members, landowners, other hunting and fishing clubs, and the general public” (St. Hubert’s Hunting and Fishing Club of Masbeth 2022) https://www.huntersofmaspeth.com/

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its revenge, they warned (Aberth 2013:206). Men and women religious experimented with vegetarianism to protest the eating of any meat, wild or domestic, with St. Godric a serious practitioner who ate only root crops, fruits, and grains (Aberth 2013:205; Waddell 1949:73). Overall, however, these were small acts and while some efforts were passionately dedicated to St. Cuthbert, there seemed no general movement toward a more measured and responsible relationship with nature. But relationships with environment were due to change as the scribes might have imagined. Aberth (2013:49) states that “only the ecological shocks on the scale of the Little Ice Age or the Black Death beginning in the fourteenth century can produce evidence of seismic shift in perception of man’s relationship with his environment, which are lacking from the thirteenth century. There is nothing like catastrophe for re-focusing attention back to the natural world.”

Saints Revised and Renewed St. Cuthbert and St. Hubert endured as powerful and ionic figureheads during the tumultuous period of the Black Death in Europe (1346–1352) (Crumplin 2004:255–256; Goderdzishvili 2018:174)) and may have grown in saintly stature because of its aftermath. The curing cult of St. Hubert persisted alongside an improving backdrop of medical knowledge of infectious disease (Wilson 1983:390). St. Cuthbert stood as a pillar of resilience through war and plague solidifying his role as a regional social, religious, and environmental icon. Given that the Christian Church was beginning to experience rapid decline in the power and influence among many of its saints’ cults, Ditchfield (2009:555) asks “not so much why the belief in [some] cults of saints endured but rather how they endured (and indeed still so).” The “land hunger” of Reginald’s time resulted in massive exploitation of land, forest, and sea resources yet these same lands, devoid of farmers and forest workers during and after the Black Death, quickly reverted to unmanaged wildland, scrub, and pioneer forest (Evans 1997:14–15). Where human population decline was most severe, newly regenerated wildlands served as species refugia where deer, fish, and forests experienced nearly a 500-year reprieve from exploitation pressures. Many species rebounded and reestablished viable populations (Aberth 2013:9–10). Aberth (2013:9–10) suggests that this period of rewilding inspired a radical alteration of attitudes toward nature. Western societies began to recognize mankind’s role in provoking ecological collapse and fostering nature’s renewal. “While nature was certainly proven capable of once again of waging war on man, humans understood more completely their own role in provoking this war” (Aberth 2013:8–9). The realization that nature could indeed make war on man in the form of disease pandemic was considered by many in the Church apocalyptic and among the surviving cults of St. Cuthbert and St. Hubert the vengeance of nature mirrored the vengeful saints to signal harsh punishments against those who were perceived as pushing the limits of nature and natural law (Aberth 2013:24).

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Adherents to the belief in cures and intercessions responded to the specter and threat of disease with the use of sacrificial tokens to protect the faithful. Like the Celts before them, Christian cult followers connected natural objects to their religious interventions using charms worn as bracelets, amulets, or pocket pieces. “Cuthbert’s Beads,” crinoid segments collected from the wasted sands of fossiliferous cliffs on Lindisfarne were strung into rosaries and sold as protections against excess and disease (Wright and Lovett 1908:298). Small metal crosses or wrought broad-headed nails with symbols associated with St. Hubert were heated and pressed to the skin as both medical treatments for animal bites and to brand patients with symbols that protected against rabies and plague. Like ancient Celtic, Saxon, and Norse house charms used in pre-Christian regions of Northern Europe, St. Hubert’s Keys were hung on walls in houses or over doors to ward off evil and illness (Baer 2010:3–4). Keys and brand designs stamped as coins evolved to become tokens of pilgrimage to St. Hubert worn around the neck or carried as a pocket talisman to protect the traveler from animal bites and diseases. Whether keys or charms, there was the ever-present Great Stag or hunting horn symbolism and practices for their use endorsed by the Church (Thwaite 2019:22–23; Newell 1889:165–166). Priests and bishops refocused their veneration of Cuthbert and Hubert on the elements of character that were reminiscent of the “paleo-Church,” foundational beliefs that harkened back to Celtic origins. The overlay of Celtic influence was an aspect of the devotion toward saints that both Protestant and Catholic divisions would later support as witness to “an unbroken Truth” (Ditchfield 2009:555). Those who revered St. Cuthbert were those who envisioned him as preeminent supernatural guardian of the North, a principal figure among the Cult of Northern Saints, a patriarchal regionalist firmly ensconced as the spiritual embodiment of the Northumbrian landscape. His cult also included members religious and civil who would emerge to oppose the authority of Roman Catholic Church in England (Newton 2008:40). The new post-pandemic wilderness of the Northumbrian abandoned landscapes inspired religious art and symbolism that clearly drew upon an elemental identity with Celtic ancestries. High regard for the right of sanctuary in civil and natural environments increased the value of inaccessible wilderness as sacred lands, refuge from the world of man, and closest to God. Cuthbert’s association with nature and the nonhuman world materialized in the early Reformation and secularized his persistent and mystical legacy (Goderdzishvile 2018:153–156; Luginbill 2014:38–40). Spared from complete dissolution, reformed church leaders at Durham Priory chose to save the saint while disposing of the cult. Attempts were made to desecrate the shrine of his burial by King Henry VIII’s henchmen, but these were stopped by locals and monks who fought to protect their beloved and now politically useful saint. The wise use of St. Cuthbert’s regional identity and the manipulation of his uses served as a transitional tool of reformation at Durham Cathedral and Priory and the organized resistance against his destruction was celebrated as a miracle of its own, with increased emphasis of the saint’s feast days, pilgrimage to the shrine, and devotions. “Thus, the celebrations, which had come to be a clear manifestation of the

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symbiosis between the civic and ecclesiastical authorities, were extended in Durham to incorporate the potent symbolism of St Cuthbert” (Newton 2008:41). Despite the reprise of forests and wildlands in the century following the Black Death, land use by states and kingdoms of Northern Europe again entered another period of intensified activity that carried forward through the sixteenth century to the beginnings of the industrial revolution (Evans 1997:15–17). Timber felling for shipbuilding and harvesting of fuel wood for smelters, furnaces, and forges to satisfy growing commercial interests paralleled the clearing and hunting of marginal, overgrown lands to address threats to livestock by eliminating habitat of remaining predator species. The kingdoms of northern France, Belgium, and Germany responded with royal calls to revive or intensify regulatory efforts to contain illegal hunting. Artificial parks and preserves were established that mimicked in miniature wilderness-like landscapes where prized species might survive in refuge. Such game parks and animal refuges were not, however, for nature appreciation but for the exclusive rights of nobility and well-off (Knoll 2004:16). St. Hubert, still a powerful icon for the privileged hunter and huntress, was called upon to settle boundary disputes and maintain prestige association within his confraternities (International Order of St. Hubertus 2022). Hubert’s namesake chivalric military orders of the Middle Ages converted to associations for gamekeepers and wardens and powerful coalitions of esteemed sportsmen (Ruge 1910). Habitat loss and local extinctions of wild boar, waterfowl, and fish alarmed civil managers as well as kings. The need for regulation, however, was met mostly by municipal governments with limited effect and adherence to the ethical code of St. Hubert. In the old Order of St. Hubertus under the Houses of Jülich and Berg, whose members were required to prove nobility by birth and thus access to royal lands, associations with St. Hubert survived as vestiges of ancient hunting traditions embedded in ritual elements (International Order of St. Hubertus 2022). Learning and honing the skills of hunting were considered essential for making war, and among the society’s fabulous mock battles and chivalric and grand ceremonies, a revived code of ethics for the sports hunter emerged alongside sworn allegiances to the rules of battle. The Hubertus orders were most likely to have members who held high military and social rank that accompanied the privileges afforded to nobility. Immersed in military honorifics and old traditions of Germanic hunting cultures, elite aristocracy and military prestige served as an essential if not elaborate next step in the evolution of modern conservation. Exclusive membership in the Order of St. Hubertus meant sworn devotion to the saint and to the conservation mission of the new combined order.7 According to contemporary history of this secretive sodality, as put forth by the International Order of St. Hubertus (2022), the order formalized and strategized to addressed four basic concerns perceived as threats to elite access to private lands and the privilege to hunt high value game species. First was for the preservation of

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populations of game species like deer which, outside the exclusive private or royal game refuge or park, had shrunk to unsustainable numbers. The second concern was the problem of how to manage human behavior and by maintaining strict codes of conduct to ensure a continuation of their God-given rights to the hunt, members adopted a culture of good conduct that followed civil game regulations. As role models of stewardship, members of the order established an atmosphere of fellowship among all hunters to advance ethical codes in the name of St. Hubert. In the sixteenth century, this provided the opportunity to serve as select vanguard over new hunting technologies while enforcing old customs. The crossbow was relegated, for instance, to become a decorative accessory above the hearth as members adopted state-of-the-art firearms and ammunitions (International Order of St. Hubertus 2022; Lee 2016). The third concern was central to the conservation of vital landscapes that supported favored game species. In the tradition of establishing preserves and parks held once by the nobles of their ancestry, members directed family wealth toward securing large land holdings and made investments in game management expertise. Privately managed conservation landscapes provided habitat continuity and ensured sustainable populations of game by limiting hunter access and establishing seasons open for the hunt. The fourth concern centered on the question of economic viability of the hunting and fishing enterprise, a seventeenth century version of “pay-to-play” (Lee 2016). The role of St. Hubert as grandmaster of conservation afforded International Order of St. Hubert (IOSH) members the favor of their patron saint through the retention of secret religious ritual. Its close affiliations to Roman Catholicism bore resemblance to archaic chivalric military orders of the Middle Ages and in its secrecy and exclusivity, signaled its desire to maintain coveted privileges of decorated rank and status under the guise of a conservation organization. Shortly after the sudden death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a guest of an IOSH-sponsored hunt on a Texas ranch in 2013, media poured forth with revelations about the existence of the secret society and its out-of-the blue rediscovered patron saint. In failed attempts to demystify IOSH history and its notoriously private membership, American outdoor adventure writer Paula Young Lee described the International Order of St. Hubertus (IOSH) as nothing more than “patron saint of rich guys with guns” (Lee 2016). At the time of the founding of the IOSH on the Continent, the English countryside experienced a period of agricultural intensification and advancements in farming technologies. Despite Tudor attempts to regulate and manage diminished forests, mud-flooded estuaries, and plummeting populations of wild game stocks, attitudes toward nature had shifted once again. Evans (1997:17) states, “All types of natural wilderness were regarded with scorn, while agriculture, on the other hand, was a wonderful improver of the landscape. A cultivated field or lush pasture was a joy to the eye. Uncultivated land was a waste and a disgrace; on the same level as a forest or an open heath.” Wildlife and the wild places necessary to sustain it were in steep decline across Wales and England with exception of Northumberland, where ideas of sanctuary

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persevered under civic and moral association with St. Cuthbert. On the most rugged lands of the region, out of reach of the most industrious agriculturalists, place names and folk legends of St. Cuthbert survived that reinforced high value lands as sacred because of their wilderness character. While vast peatlands were systematically drained for conversion to field and pasture in the eighteenth century, highlands and rocky coasts were secured for their beauty and solitude (Adler 2006:27). A stark truth of industrializing English society was that people were increasingly divorced from the natural world, a time of significant rural depopulation. By 1800, twenty-five percent of England’s population lived in cities, doubling urban density in fifty years. By 1900, eighty percent of the English population had removed to cities depopulating the countryside to create essentially an urban nation (Evans 1997:22–23). Evans (1997) describes how the urban working class began to idolize and yearn for the wilder spaces of their heritage, no matter how unbearable and cruel rural life had been for their medieval ancestors. Improved farming and consolidated management of rural lands further contributed to the deconstruction of rural life. Though many improvements brought advances in crop yield and livestock health, fewer people on the land meant less connection to cultural traditions and heritage. Industrial society worked according to schedules of production and requirements of machines. Imaginings of a lost natural environment beckoned the work-weary to nostalgic places of rest and psychological relief.

Revival of the Patron With the many cycles of the Great Awakening, the Protestant trans-Atlantic mixture of religious and social reform of the eighteenth and nineteenth century spurred regional evangelicalism where the uses of St. Cuthbert expanded to include patronage for hospitals and a range of charities while in the creative stream of Victorian Catholicism, the legends of Cuthbert were celebrated in a lively body of music and arts within the northern region. Pilgrimage to the Cuthbert’s shrine at Durham Cathedral continued, though somewhat subdued if not secularized, with all ritual associated with the old Catholic tradition removed. However, these gatherings were suited more for the curious and for students of history. The saint was even adopted as patron in the commercial districts of Edinburgh, retail saint of merchant cooperatives. The influence of St. Cuthbert entered the modern period relatively unscathed if not renewed and the revived patron commanded an enigmatic space between spiritual and political (Macdonald 2012). What of Cuthbert’s legendary animal companions, symbolic and real? Did they accompany their saint into the modern world? By the 1800s, otter appeared more frequently in decorative embroidery on altar cloths and church vestments than existed in the semi-wilds of Scotland and Northumberland. St. Cuthbert could not protect them from the increasingly popular pastime of hunting-for-fun. Sport hunting and poaching eliminated the golden eagle, white-tailed sea eagle, osprey, buzzard, and red kite across most of England, Wales, and Ireland by the end of the nineteenth

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century. Marsh harriers and hen harriers were extinct in England and rare in Scotland by the start of the Great War. Goshawks and sparrowhawks suffered near collapse of populations in the Midlands and Borders as wealthy landowners and gamekeepers eliminated these predators of highly prized grouse and pheasant. Along the coasts, Victorian collectors gathered enormous quantities of guillemot, eider, and auk eggs and skins to sell to natural history museums and private collections around the world decimating easily accessible nesting colonies on the low cliffs of the Farnes. Great auks were driven to extinction (Evans 1997:34). “In one day,” writes Evans (1997:32), “the ‘illustrious ornithologist’ Henry Seebohm took 456 eggs home with him from nests on the Farne Islands.” Live trapping of small birds fed a profitable pet trade and drove wild populations of goldfinches, wheatears, and wood larks to unsustainable levels. The millinery trade dealt in bird parts, feathers, and even entire preserved bodies of birds that were mounted on ladies’ hats. Tiny hummingbirds, colorful songbirds, and egrets and herons that provided elegant breeding plumage were harvested by the millions to satisfy market demand (Evans 1997:29–33; Syse 2013:543–544). Fortunately for the Victorians (and the wildlife upon which some of them preyed), a renewed interest in animal rights and nature appreciation developed from concerns for social welfare that extended to man’s duty to animals, wild and domestic. The drive to grant legal protections against abuse and neglect, backed by regulation and punishment, emerged from England’s crowded cities and growing middle class. Nature enthusiasts were also politically active and lobbied for government protections for high value and rare wild species. Natural history societies joined forces to press for national conservation laws (Evans 1997:37–38). The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the National Trust merged with anti-millinery and anti-gamekeeper organizations to some political and social effect but not until the Great War had scoured the land of its working horses for military use on the Continent did protection sentiments turn to the land itself (Evans 1997:35–43). A deep sense of loss for both the beloved draft horse and its rural landscape is still felt across the Midlands and Northeast England. When I walked the 60-mile St. Cuthbert’s Way pilgrimage path from Melrose to Lindisfarne in 2018, I met several elders who still lamented the loss of the working horse and the culture that went with it over a century before. Unlike Victorian attitudes toward animals alone, twentieth century sentiments for animals and their landscapes were felt keenly in the north, manifested as conservation desires for the protection of entire ecosystems that held deep cultural, spiritual, and scientific value. And there, too, was St. Cuthbert renewed again as sentry of a vast network of conservation lands and organizations in the North in a nation now nominally Christian yet still full of legends of their beloved patron saint (Wild 2012:135–136). In a twist of modern lore enhanced with medieval invention, the holy enforcer St. Cuthbert is well and good to mind the mission and goals of conservation efforts across Northumberland and Scotland (Wild 2010:76). Protected landscapes, home to resident and migratory species, are mapped and identified for the nature enthusiast of the twenty-first century on the car park kiosks marking Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and the National Nature Reserve. Interpretive maps outlining St. Cuthbert’s Way on the abbey garden wall in Melrose and St. Cuthbert’s Way:

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From Melrose to Lindesfarne (Turnbull 2010) both credit the saint for creating protection laws for wildlife that, in some miraculous tradition, have survived since the Dark Ages. Images of St. Cuthbert can be found across media that explain the lure of these wild landscapes to tourist and scientist alike. In the popular BBC One series “The Godspels Good News 2013,” presenter Chris Connel espoused, “few people know [that Cuthbert] was the world’s first nature conservationist” (BBC One 2013). The conservation of these historic and natural environments is cause for great regional and national pride, and so it seems is the resurrection of St. Cuthbert as an important modern influencer and enforcer. “The tales are ancient, but the underlying sentiments speak directly to us today. We have much to learn from a spirituality that works with the grain and rhythm of the natural world and rejoices in the whole of creation,” writes McManners (2008:91). But modern conservation needs are far more complex and complicated than even Reginald of Durham Priory could have imagined, and he couldn’t have rewritten any old legend that could possibly address the challenges of the Anthropocene.8 Environmental tourism based on the legends of St. Cuthbert has given some new life to Lindisfarne, Holy Island, and its neighboring coastal communities (Wild 2012:77–82). The oldest Anglican Church on the island, once shuttered for having no surviving congregation, has been repurposed as the St. Cuthbert’s Visitor Center where nature programs titled “Faith and Feathers,” or “Birds of the Bible” are offered during the busy tourist season. This former church has been transformed into a secular public meeting space decorated with children’s nature crafts, with paper puffins and tern twirling from mobiles in the airy high portal. Nearby, the active Parish Church of St. Mary the Virgin is open daily to visitors who come to view stunning nineteenth century stained-glass windows with iconic eider, seabirds, and playful otters who, along with starfish, shells, and ocean waves, provide colorspattered light to the dark Saxon interior wall where the life-sized modern sculpture “The Journey” by Fenwick Lawson portray cowled monks carrying Cuthbert’s coffin on their shoulders. The local vicar, a passionate bird watcher, offered me a personal tour of the church’s interior. “We’ve come close to losing our natural and Celtic faith heritage many times here on Lindisfarne—in fact, all throughout the north country. With Cuthbert’s help in this new age, we can save both for a time, but I do worry about the impact that global warming is having in the long term in this region”.9

Discussion and Conclusion Has a revival of interest in certain early Western Christian Saints strengthened social resolve in efforts to conserve landscapes of concern in the Anthropocene? Certainly, the rediscovered Saint Hubert and long-time regional patron Saint Cuthbert have endured since the Early Middle Ages to reinforce the importance of these

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responsibilities. Since the Early Middle Ages, a moral and ethical use-of-nature framework is persistent among the saints’ stories and their accompanying mystic legacies. The veneration of Saint Hubert represents a mythological link to the dark forest ecological communities of Celt-Gaulish lands and supernatural gamekeepers of the Old World, retained over centuries to serve the intentions of an elite and secret group, the International Society of St. Hubert (IOSH). This sodality comprises men of privilege and power who share a general appreciation of northern Europe’s natural conservation heritage evoked by St. Hubert and the persistent imagery of the Great Stag, Cernunnos, the Master of Animals. The influence of St. Cuthbert is grounded through ancient time to the sacred coastal landscapes of Northumberland, to the Sacred Salmon of the Celts and the Otter, messenger to the Underworld. Is it no coincidence that some of the U.K.’s greatest conservation successes have occurred where northern rivers have been restored under Cuthbert’s watchful eye and where daily encounters with otter and seasonal spawning runs of the salmon can be experienced once again. The historic and modern imagery and legends of Saints Cuthbert and Hubert remind us that in their memory is preserved older lineages of socioecological associations rooted in powerful religious and spiritual practices cultivated over many thousands of years before Christianity set about to acquire and overtake these ancient Celtic and Gaulish influences. Cerunnos, adorned with his antlered headdress and surrounded with his menagerie of wild and fanciful creatures is transformed as the Great Stag, Christian crucifix afloat in the basket of his antlers, speaks to the conversion of beliefs from animal-spirited gods and deities to monotheistic, omnipotent, and patriarchal religious systems. Cernunnos, mediator between Celtic societies and the animal kingdom (Wright and Lovett 1908) becomes the obedient, if not domesticated companion to Hubertos, the patron saint of hunters (International Order of St. Hubertus 2022) and the tradition of supernatural gamekeeping is preserved. Both saints modern personages convey the necessity for taking responsibility for the natural world, no matter the uses we make of it, but the broad manifestations of environmental threat due to global warming and the required shift in man’s perception and conservation response is far beyond the range of traditional intercessions and patronages. Because environmental dangers of the Anthropocene resist local conservation treatments and are of a scale best defined as large and complex conservation problems, the concerns of the aforementioned Rev. Paul Collins (Vicar of Church of St. Mary the Virgin), about the ability of a long-revered saint to help solve them, are valid. The uses of conservation saints may have come to a modern end, but maybe another miracle or two await a change in our ecological attitudes and understandings. Can a holy enforcer again influence political and religious will to save the planet from ourselves? Despite the power and prestige of saintly associations throughout Church history, serious harm to the natural environment went about unabated and what saintly influences may have inspired episodes of an evolving conservation ethic could just be interpreted today as added layers to their supernatural stories. “Beneath the hope of change lay the horror of losing the world of wild nature” writes Dunlap

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(2004:97) who interprets environmental advocacy as a religious quest with roots far deeper the Christian tradition of saints. He argues for continued transformations of our attitudes and beliefs about conservation practices that, through the perspective of ancient religious traditions, might help us see spiritual value in our actions. We might even imagine hopeful outcomes in our efforts to reshape our relationship with our planet as caretakers and stewards. But law, regulation, and saintly enforcement aside, what is needed most is a revival of the conservation ethic expressed in the stories of Saints Cuthbert and Hubert, amplified by the complexities of these times made accountable instead to the nonhuman world that includes the great stags, otters, and eiders (Dunlap 2004:168–171). Acknowledgments I would like to thank the Institute of Pilgrimage Studies and Dr. George Greenia for the support granted through the George Greenia Research Fellowship that allowed me the opportunity to walk the pilgrimage route St. Cuthbert’s Way to collect data, conduct interviews, and assemble landscape histories that document the ecological life and repurposing of Cuthbert and the importance of his influence in today’s critical conservation efforts of the Scottish Borders and the Northumberland coast.

References Aberth, John. 2013. An Environmental History of eth Middle Ages: The Crucible of Nature. New York: Routledge. Adam, David. 1993. Fire of the North, Life of St. Cuthbert. London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Adler, Judith. 2006. Cultivating Wilderness: Environmentalism and Legacies of Early Christian Asceticism. Comparative Studies in Society and History 48 (1): 4–37. Baer, G.M. 2010. The History of Rabies. London: Academic Press. BBC One. 2013. St. Cuthbert: Father of Conservation, In: The Godspels Good News 2013. Series: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b036f7wp Backhouse, Janet. 2014. The Lindesfarne Gospels. New York, NY: Phaidon Press. Bober, Phyliss Fray. 1951. Cernunnos: Origin and Transformation of a Celtic Divinity. American Journal of Archaeology 55 (1): 13–51. Britnell, Richard. 2014. Durham Priory Manorial Accounts, 1277–1310. Woodbridge: Boydell Press for the Surtees Society. Clark, Stuart. 1999. Thinking With Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Crumplin, Sally. 2004. Rewriting History in the Cult of St. Cuthbert from the Ninth to the Twelfth Centuries. Ph.D. Thesis, University of St. Andrews. Retrieved from: https://research-repository. standrews.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10023/406/SallyCrumplinPhDThesis.pdf?sequence=6 D’Arcy, Jonathon Dacre Boulton. 2000. The Knights and the Crown: The Monarchial Orders of Knighthood in Later Medieval Europe 13-25-1520. New York, NY: Boydell Press. Ditchfield, Simon. 2009. Thinking with Saints: Sanctity and Society in the Early Modern World. Critical Inquiry 35: 552–584. Dunlap, T. 2004. Faith in Nature: Environmentalism as Religious Quest. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. Evans, David. 1997. A History of Conservation in Britain. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Routledge. Galloway, James. 2010. The Thames Marshes at the Close of the Middle Ages. In: Tides and Floods: New research on London and the tidal Thames from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth

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Century. Center for Metropolitan History, Working Papers Series No. 4. London, UK, University of London. Gerauld, Gordon Hall. 1916. Saints’ Legends. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin. Goderdzishvili, Nino. 2018. Iconographic Variations of St. Eustace Hunting Composition in the Medieval Georgian and French Sculpture. Studia Orientacne 2 (14): 148–181. Goryashko, Alexandra. 2020. A Wild Bird and a Cultured Man: The Common Edier and Homo Sapiens, Fourteen Centuries Together. Alexandra Goryashko and Alexander Kondratyev. Eds., St. Petersburg, Russia. Green, Miranda. 1986. The Gods and the Celts. Gloustershire: The History Press. ———. 1992. Animals in Celtic Life and Myth. New York: N.Y., Routledge. ———. 1998. God in Man's Image: Thoughts on the Genesis and Affiliations of Some RomanoBritish Cult-Imagery. Britannia 29: 17–30. Hasseler, Elizabeth 2012. Miracles of Justice in Reginald of Durham’s Libellus de admirandis beati Cuthberti virtutibus. Thesis in History, University of Washington. Retrieved from: https:// digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/24704/Hasseler.pdf? sequence=1&isAllowed=y Hoffman, Richard C. 1996. Economic Development and Aquatic Ecosystems in Medival Europe. The American Historical Review 101 (3): 631–669. International Order of St. Hubertus. 2022. History of the Order. Accessed Feb. 6, 2022. https:// www.iosh-usa.com/about-us/history-of-the-order. Knoll, Martin. 2004. Hunting in the Eighteenth Century: An Environmental History Perspective. Historical Social Research 29 (3): 9–36. Lee, Paula Young. 2016. Scalia’s Elite Hunting Pals: Meet St. Hubertus, Patron Saint of Rich Guys with Guns. Salon Magazine. February 26, 2016. Accessed Feb. 6, 2022. https://www.salon. com/2016/02/26/scalias_elite_hunting_pals_meet_st_hubertus_patron_saint_of_rich_guys_ with_guns/ Leopold, Aldo. 1949. A Sand County Almanac. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1963. Totemism. Beacon Press. Luginbill, Sarah. 2014. The Bones of St. Cuthbert: Defining a Saint’s Cult in Medieval Northumbria. History Honors Thesis, Trinity University. Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.trinity. edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=hist_honors Macdonald, Catriona M. M. 2012. A Different Commonwealth: The Co-Operative Movement in Scotland, In: The Co-Operative Movement in Practice: International Perspectives. Donald Macdonald and Elizabeth Macknight, eds. Retrieved from: https://community-wealth.org/ sites/clone.community-wealth.org/files/downloads/book-mcdonell-macknight.pdf#page=11 McManners, John. 2008. Cuthbert and the Animals. London: Gemini Productions. Minard, Antone. 2016. The Mystery of St Cuthbert’s Ducks: An Adventure in Hagiography. Folklore 127 (3): 325–343. Newell, William Wells. 1889. Review of “Biblioteca Mythica: La Rage et St. Hubert. Paris”. Journal of American Folklore 2 (5): 164–166. Newton, Diana. 2008. The Impact of Reformation on North-East England: A Preliminary Survey. Northern History 45 (1): 37–49. Robert, Dana L. 2011. Historical Trends in Missions and Earth Care. International Bulletin of Missionary Research 35 (3): 123–129. https://doi.org/10.1177/239693931103500302. Rogerson, Barnaby. 2013. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers. London: Profile Books. Ruge, F.M. 1910. Military Orders of St. Hubert. In: The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York, NY, Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved from: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07508b.htm Smith, A.H. 1933. Old Scandinavian Lundr. Leeds Studies in English 2: 72–75. St. Hubert’s Hunting and Fishing Club of Masbeth. 2022. Accessed February 6, 2022. https://www. huntersofmaspeth.com/ Strauss, Susan. 1996. The Passionate Fact: Storytelling in Natural History and Cultural Interpretation. Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Press.

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Syse, Karen Victoria Lykke. 2013. Otters as Symbols in the British Environmental Discourse. Landscape Research 38 (4): 540–552. Thwaite, Annie. 2019. A History of Amulets in Ten Objects. Science Museum Group Journal 11. https://doi.org/10.15180/191103. Turnbull, Ronald. 2010. St. Cuthbert’s Way from Melrose to Lindesfarne. Edinburgh: Rucksack Readers. Waddell, Helen. 1949. Beasts and Saints. London: Constable Press. Webb, J.F. 1965. Translation of Bede: Vita Sancti Cuthberti. London: Penguin Books. Wild, Robert. 2010. Sacred Natural Sites: Conserving Nature and Culture. In International Union for Nature and Natural Resources, ed. Bas Verschuuren, Robert Wild, Jeff McNeely, and Gonzalo Oviedo. London: Taylor and Francis Publishers. ———. 2012. Holy Island of Lindisfarne and the Modern Relevance of Celtic Nature Saints. Diversity of Sacred Lands in Europe. Proceedings of the Third Workshop of the Delos Initiative. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Josep-Maria-Mallarach-2/publication/271 851529_The_Diversity_of_Sacred_Lands_in_Europe_Proceedings_of_the_Third_Workshop_ of_the_Delos_Initiative_ Wilson, Stephen. 1983. Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wright, A.R., and E. Lovett. 1908. Specimens of Modern Mascots and Ancient Amulets of the British Isles. Folklore 19 (3): 288–303.

Dr. Peggy Eppig serves as Lecturer in Environmental Studies at Goucher College, Baltimore, Maryland, and as Lead Conservation Educator for the Lancaster Conservancy in Pennsylvania. She is an independent researcher in environmental and conservation history with a focus on environmental pilgrimage. Her interests include, landscape and conservation history.

Chapter 9

Iconic Resources, Prestige, and Conservation on Boigu Island of the Torres Strait, Australia Shelly Tiley

Abstract Cultural and evolutionary forces conspire to make large animals highly desirable as prey, favoring the intensified exploitation of an inherently limited resource. On Boigu Island of the Australian Torres Strait, dugong (Dugong dugon) far exceeds other local resources in economic value, and prestige is attached to dugong hunters for their knowledge and skill (Raven (Tiley)), The point of no diminishing returns: Hunting and resource decline on Boigu Island, Torres Strait, Australia. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, 1990). This salience is reflected in the degree to which dugong are embedded in the cultural, social, and spiritual systems. Hunting takes place in a “ritually orchestrated landscape” with a ritually engaged supernatural gamekeeper who rewards appropriate behavior with hunting success (McNiven, World Archaeology 35(3):329–349, 2003; McNiven and Feldman, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 13(2):169–194, 2003). Today, dugong’s cultural importance has made its viability so critical that Islander communities have developed community-based management plans. Considering the predictable association of large game with prestige systems, the Torres Strait material offers a valuable model for involving indigenous groups in the management of large game. The recognition and use of Traditional Ecological Knowledge benefits conservation efforts, while the award of respect and prestige by the scientific community works in tandem with existing cultural practices to continue to reward indigenous hunters for their skills and knowledge. Local management of the resources also allows the next generation to reconnect with spiritual forces through the cultural revitalization of traditional lifeways. Keywords Dugong · Conservation · Prestige hunting · Boigu Island · Torres Strait · Supernatural gamekeepers · Indigenous rangers · Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)

S. Tiley (✉) Tiley Research, Placerville, CA, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. J. Chacon (ed.), The History and Environmental Impacts of Hunting Deities, Conflict, Environment, and Social Complexity 4, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37503-3_9

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A Mythical Past The Torres Strait between Australia and Papua New Guinea hosts some of the most marine-oriented societies on earth, and dugong hunting (and its associated ritual practices) has been ongoing for perhaps the last 4000 years. Archaeological investigations by McNiven and Feldman (2003) found that excavation of ancient bone mounds appeared to show ritual treatment of dugong skulls in the remote past with the goal of increasing hunting success. Dugong hunting appears in several myths that illustrate how the practice began and proper hunting and sharing behavior. Dugong hunting was said to have been invented by the deceased parents of a man named Sesere. Their skulls spoke to him, informing him of the edibility of dugong, instructing him in the construction of a platform, providing him with the first harpoon and dart, and directing him in the correct butchering procedure (Haddon et al. 1904:40–42). The mythical association of dugong hunters and Boigu Island in particular is foundational in nature. The Sida myth, which lays out the reasons for the economic differences between the islands, firmly place Boigu as dependent on the sea. In this myth, Sida travels from the west, visiting various islands and bestowing agricultural techniques and products in the places where he is treated well. On Boigu, he is given an old woman to sleep with and in wrath prevents sweet potatoes, bananas, and coconuts from growing there, stating “Now you will eat nothing but dugong and turtle” (Haddon et al. 1904:21). This evaluation is echoed by a myth from Papua New Guinea, where shipwrecked Papuans are received and fed only dugong meat by the island’s leader (Landtman 1920). In one story from Mawatta on the New Guinea coast, only dugong hunters inhabited Boigu, causing them to marry women from the adjacent Papuan village of Buzi (Laade 1971:112). Transgressions of sharing rules also are the subject of myths. In one, wives turn into frogs to protest their portion of “bones, ribs, livers, and guts” (Laade 1971:95–97). In another, women turn into flying foxes and fly away with their children because they never receive turtle fat (Riley 1925:329). The inequitable distribution of dugong meat is a sort of original sin in a myth wherein the first dugong hunter, Sesere, is said to have shared only poor pieces of meat of the first dugong caught, causing people to fight over it. The result was that supernatural forces made dugong difficult to catch so the problem was less frequent (Haddon et al. 1904:42–44). Sharing freely was considered a method to gain luck in subsequent hunts (Haddon et al. 1904:210). One of the most telling mythical themes regarding the importance of sharing concerns the Dogai. Dogai are ugly, misshapen, supernatural women who cause general havoc; their usual behavior includes stealing food. The implication is that only a monster would behave in such a manner (Haddon et al. 1904:104).

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Maintaining Hunting Excellence Through Cultural Practices Dugong hunting is deeply embedded in Boigu Islander culture. Successful marine hunting in the past and the present involves social manipulation of trade and marriage practices, technical knowledge and skill, and cultural/religious practices meant to minimize risk and/or enhance hunting returns. For the sake of brevity, only the latter category regarding traditional practices is discussed here. While the following observations were made in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many of the described actions and beliefs continue. Modern cultural practices are discussed in a later section. The knowledge, skills, and athleticism of dugong hunters are impressive. Extensive traditional ecological knowledge of both the sea and the hunted animals is required. Captains must understand the weather, the tides, and winds well and know the locations of the sea grass feeding grounds, reading the grazing tracks at low tide to estimate the number and sex of the herd. They must understand the formation of the herd while swimming in order to choose the best animal. All of these skills are formally taught to pre-adolescent boys, since all males are expected to be proficient enough to at least serve as hunting crew. The spearsman does the actual harpooning and securing of the prey in the water. Drowning remains a threat to spearsmen. Once a dugong has been speared, the harpooner maintains a hold on the rope and arranges being towed feet first on his back so that he can breathe in the resulting air pocket. The dugong is very strong and able to dive for over four minutes, during which drowning of the harpooner could occur (Haddon 1912:166). There was also danger for crewmembers who could get caught as the rope uncoiled; one modern hunter has been pulled overboard five times. It can take up to an hour to exhaust the animal sufficiently to pull them to the boat and suffocate them, during which time the blood in the water can attract sharks. Skill and luck combined to make a successful hunter; an individual followed certain magical and ritual observances throughout his life to ensure catches and personal safety. The first began at birth, when a “smart man for spearing dugong” shook hands with the male baby in hopes of affecting the child’s character is a positive way (Haddon et al. 1904:87). An adult employed the assistance of his ancestors, used effigies and charms, and paid meticulous attention to behavioral restrictions in order to maximize his skill. In fact, it was a widespread practice to consult the skulls of deceased relatives before a hunt, sometimes offering food or tobacco in exchange for future assistance (Gill and Wyatt 1876:302). The interest of the dead in hunting did not end with aiding their kin. There was also hunting in the afterlife. Spirits used waterspouts to catch dugong and turtle, which they continued to enjoy. The switch in hunting method required a period of training, just as in life (Haddon 1935:354). Wooden charms in the form of a carved dugong were placed in the canoe marked with the owner’s clan symbol. This helped direct the canoe to the hunting area and attracted the dugong. An eye was painted on the canoe to assist in locating prey and harpoons were decorated with a sea-snake design, causing their strike to be swift

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and fatal (Landtman 1920:123). Charms are placed in the canoe bows, and although grass from a dugong’s teeth still forms the base, individual charms are also included. They are placed in dinghies by fathers preceding their son’s first hunt and are always carried for success. When dugongs surface, they exhale in puffs, which are believed to be the breath of the hunter’s father or grandfather leading him to the kill. Omens or cues are also individualized. When one hunter’s son cries, it is assumed he is hungry for meat, and a hunt is undertaken. Another hunter drinks, then dips his feet in the amniotic fluid from a pregnant dugong to ensure success. Aid from various specialists was also sought; specific clans or individuals controlled ceremonies, objects, and substances that attracted dugong or increased the hunter’s efficacy; other specialists controlled the weather. Therefore, the success of the hunter relied upon the cooperation of several individuals other than his crew. On the other hand, the alienation of any of these sources of power could lead to failure and perhaps death. The hunter who could control all of these factors was greatly respected. Just prior to the hunt, a sorcerer specializing in dugong magic was consulted. This was a hereditary position; in 1987, several generations up to the present day could be traced. A stone, roughly shaped like a dugong was painted and presented with an offering of fish and coconuts. A prayer was offered for the success of the hunt. Control of the weather entailed consultation with the wind- and rainmaker. This too was a hereditary position. When requested for dugong hunting, a pre-paid food presentation was required Haddon et al. 1904:350–351). Magic, or puripuri, was used to explain illness, death, and failure in addition to taking credit for success (Singe 1979:157). The same men who provided magical assistance for success could also curse hunters. Curses usually resulted from dissatisfaction with the portion of meat presented to the specialists. Dugong could be sent away from the island if either the controller of the magic stone or dugong clansmen felt cheated in their share (Haddon and Rivers 1904:183; Haddon et al. 1904:321). The wind- and rainmaker could call up a strong storm to prevent sailing, or stop the wind altogether (Haddon et al. 1904:330). For more serious retribution, the cavity if the dugong stone was rubbed with medicine, resulting in strangulation by the rope attached to the harpoon. The wooden effigies of dugong and turtle could be treated similarly, also causing death (Haddon et al. 1904:342). A canoe and equipment could be hexed as well by sorcerers or by inattention to rules (Haddon et al. 1904:330). Behavioral restrictions for the hunter centered around sex and food. Sex was prohibited before hunt, and a hunter with a pregnant wife was not allowed to pursue prey. The hunt is said to be a time to think of their children, not sex. No quarreling between husband and wife were allowed before the hunt, nor could a hunter’s wife criticize him during his absence. These sorts of risk reduction strategies could work for both successful and unsuccessful hunts. The practices gave the hunter confidence, which is an element of performance excellence. If the hunt was unsuccessful, there were plenty of other participants that may have intentionally or unintentionally prevented success. A hunter’s success, therefore, depended not only upon his skill in hunting, but upon his skill in social relationships that could aid or destroy his prowess.

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It is notable that these practices revolve around increases in hunting effectiveness, but not around the increase of dugong numbers per se. Sea resources were understood to be inexhaustible. There was a belief in the creation of a finite number of things and an unchangeable order in the universe. Nothing completely new is thought to happen in the natural world and the drastic disappearance of dugong would be impossible. According to Haddon (1935), traditional Torres Straits Islanders firmly hold that unlike cultigens, dugongs can never be exhausted, no matter how unrestrained the harvest. Likewise, during the course of fieldwork in 1987, no one was willing to entertain the possibility of extinction as Boigu Islanders view the sea as “limitless and inexhaustible; it is unthinkable that it could be empty of dugong” (Raven 1990:296).

Hunting Rewards Hunting was and remains a prestige-filled occupation, in both the past and the present, although the rewards have varied in nature. In the past, only hunters, sorcerers, and warriors were allowed to be polygamous, which had a large impact on their role in the community. Multiple marriages not only controlled extra female labor; they resulted in extended connections to other kin groups, and an enlarged land and reef base from their dowries. On Mabuiag, Rivers reported that more than half of the “dugong men” had polygamous marriages in 1888, with between two and five wives each (Haddon and Rivers 1904:240). The nature of hunting fosters differential success between hunters, since physical skills, social skills, courage, knowledge, and luck combined to create excellence. While all men were to be somewhat proficient, those that stood out were termed “champions,” whose fame spread to other islands. Accumulation of bride wealth required hunting, and parents favored marrying their daughters to such men. The hunting families provided their children with a more secure and affluent home, often growing their household by inviting in the parents of the wife. In the old days, their care was offset by providing an additional daughter as co-wife. Hunting families also adopted children from their kinsmen, a practice which continues. Hunting families contributed to everyday subsistence as well as inter- and intraisland events. Dugong were large enough that the meat distribution at times fed the whole island. Because of their ability to sponsor various rites of passage, hunters have taken over unrelated high status positions, officiating at funerals and the “mother’s brother” role for the first hunt and first haircut. Good hunters are crucial to the status of the island as a whole at pan-island events like the Kubin Kai interisland festivals and tombstone opening ceremonies.

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Response to the Growing Scarcity of Dugong in the 1980s Two historic declines in dugong numbers can be linked to the influence of markets. Local demand for dugong oil during World War II was followed by the opening of a commercial market at Daru northeast of Boigu in Papua New Guinea. The catch at Daru went from 25 dugong per year prior to World War II, to 75 per year in the 1960s. Boigu Islanders experienced a noticeable lack of dugong in their waters for the first time shortly after World War II. This was probably precipitated by the intensified exploitation of the oil rendering days. Two men from the village of Dumir, with whom close trade relations obtained, instructed people to leave gifts to a mythical creature (supernatural gamekeeper) named Kogea. Too many people were driving the dugong away, and they claimed that Kogea could intervene (Laade 1971:58). The 1970s were catastrophic as nets became widely available. It is estimated that up to six hundred dugong were captured with this method between 1977 and 1979 (Hudson 1986:79). Catches quickly declined from 212 in 1979 to 18 in 1982, prompting a law forbidding the sale of dugong meat in 1984. Kiwai hunters form Papua New Guinea who formerly fished for the market moved south and west, depleting populations usually encountered by Boigu Islanders from the Warrior Reefs. By 1987, the local dugong populations had not recovered from this period of intense exploitation. Both the explanation and the remedy for these past periods of overexploitation also have a cultural component. In 1987, an emic explanation for smaller, more dispersed dugong herds in recent years has been to question the expertise of island sorcerers. A brother and sister were the last to control the full range of hunting magic on Boigu. The cassowary feather rope for dugong calling was accidentally burned by the brother’s wife. The woman was the last to perform ceremonies for pregnant dugong, bestowing luck on canoes. Crying and patting the canoe that captured a pregnant dugong, she made the baby “swim,” and sang and prayed. Some feel that with their deaths, all was lost. There is a feeling of lost power regarding the ability to perform magic among contemporary specialists and of regret for discarded proscriptions. Specialists are no longer universally proclaimed competent in their actions, and in the case of dugong stones several people vie for the right to control them. All “call” dugong using a dugong-shaped stone which is rubbed with coconut oil, spoken to, and positioned to guide the dugong in. Someone who alienated the controller could also deny individuals hunting success, or send the dugong away from the island entirely, a serious threat. Accusations of such behavior were recorded during fieldwork in 1987. Many younger people no longer obey various rules that are believed to affect the outcomes of dugong hunts causing the older generation to fear for their future. This is another stated reason for dugongs’ decline. The modern inattention to dugong bone disposal is an example; previously the bone would have been placed as tallies at the Tree of Skulls. Traditionally, a large banyan tree called the Tree of Skulls was hung with dugong skulls as a tribute to the proficiency of hunters and warriors, and

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as a shrine to the supernatural gamekeeper for hunting success (Raven 1990). Now, however, dugong skulls are simply left on the family’s beach. Additional breeches in protocol include young dugong hunters having sex with their wives along with young men and women in general cohabitating during turtle mating season. These transgressions are believed to jeopardize dugong and turtle hunts (Raven 1990). In sum, traditional community elders believe that inappropriate behavior on the part of young hunters is the underlying cause for dugong and turtle declines (Wilson et al. 2010). Elders formerly had the responsibility to “call up” dugong and determine the number to be hunted. This served both to direct hunting effort and control access. In recent times, fewer elders know how to do this, making hunts increasingly unsuccessful but the total catch uncontrolled. The notion that Boigu Islander magic was waning caused a search for new sorcerers. The use of outsiders from Papua New Guinea became increasingly common. The perception was that these people, who lived closer to the “old ways” might retain more of their power (Beckett 1987:31). In sum, magical practices on Boigu in 1987 are seen as less responsible for dugong hunting luck than for hunting misfortune: sorcery is more common than protective magic. Along with the skepticism regarding modern sorcerers’ powers, some claim that the hunters are not as proficient as they were in the old days, though this did not seem to refer the best hunters. The young men’s lack of knowledge is implicated by their poor harvests: unsuccessful hunts are seen as the consequence of their ignorance causing them to hunt in the wrong places or at the wrong times. Much of the old sailing expertise is lost, and younger men know less about tides, currents, and their prey. This is compounded by their rejection, or at least nonobservance, of culturally prescribed practices associated with hunting, the proper treatment of animal remains (by way of the Tree of Skulls), and the lack of assistance from ritual specialists. Other practices were affected by the scarcity of dugong in the 1980s. The large size of dugong had previously been a community-wide asset when a portion of every dugong went to every household. Sharing rules were no longer agreed upon universally. Some say one should “share with everyone,” others claim all of the relatives need to receive portions and still others think that only half need be shared with relatives. In every scenario, the captain and spearsman get choice cuts, as does the mother’s brother or trainer, and parents and adopted parents receive cooked shares. The captain’s mother “owns” the meat and meat was distributed by an older male relative, therefore not implicating the hunter in perceived problems with the portions received. The uncertainty regarding the division of meat in explained in two ways: too many people and too few dugong, or a decline in the respect for the old ways. In sum, a major factor in the decrease of successful hunts was seen as a loss of assistance from the various supernatural elements (including the supernatural gamekeeper) that had once aided the hunter whose behavior was appropriate. The demise of strong magical control is at the heart of hunting failure; in the old days, dugong were “everywhere” because they had “full power” (Laade 1971:60).

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Biologists’ Assessments Over the last 40 years, fluctuating readings of dugong herd size by marine biologists demonstrate the difficulties in assessing the population of a migratory marine species. Intrinsic problems in the sustainability of hunting large mammals like dugong, however, are well known. Large mammals occur in lower numbers in all environments, are slower to reproduce, and have fewer offspring. From their understanding of the life cycle of dugongs, researchers have estimated that, dugong populations only increase by about 5% per year. A population of dugongs will decline if more than about 2% of adult females in a population is killed each year (Marsh et al. 1999). Furthermore, for long-lived animals such as sea turtles and dugongs, by the time significant changes in abundance have occurred, it is often hard to rebuild population levels (Grayson et al. 2006:8). The health of the dugong population is hard to assess by catch numbers alone, as substantial inter-annual variations occur. These variations are often the result of extra-local factors such as seagrass die-offs. Boigu Islanders interviewed by Johannes and MacFarlane (1991) were unanimous that an unusually high proportion of dugongs caught in Torres Strait during the 1970s were “wati dangal” (thin dugongs) during a documented seagrass die-off (Marsh et al. 2004:441). Hunting practices along the south coast of Papua New Guinea impact herd size, but catch numbers are not available (Johannes and Neis 2007). Dugong are known to undertake large scale and/or long-distance movements far beyond the local area, a pattern consistent with traditional knowledge (Johannes and MacFarlane 1991). Satellite tracking studies indicate that a dugong can travel hundreds of kilometers (Marsh et al. 2004). There has long been concern that the modern catch of dugong is unsustainable, triggered by “changing economic, environmental, social and cultural pressures, new technologies and erosion of sanctions and taboos” (Heinsohn et al. 2004:425). The urgency of the situation, however, has been interpreted differently over the decades. Johannes and MacFarlane (1991) showed a four-fifths decrease in dugongs caught in the western islands between 1983–1984 as were caught in 1976–1978, creating consternation over a possible downward trend. Aerial surveys in 1988 and 1991 showed increasing numbers of dugong (Harris et al. 1995). Sustainability studies have continued into the twenty-first century (Heinsohn et al. 2004; Marsh et al. 2004; Kwan et al. 2006); the most recent has again shown increasing dugong numbers. Hunting for turtles, the second-most valued marine resource, complicates hunters’ response to declining dugong populations. Since they are found in the same sea grass areas, dugong could be hunted opportunistically during turtle hunts. Hunting changes would then take place only when turtle numbers declined as well, necessitating the management of both species simultaneously (Marsh et al. 2004).

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The Value of TEK and Community-Based Conservation Today, dugong hunting is sanctioned by the Torres Strait Treaty between Australia and Papua New Guinea (PNG) and in Australia by the Commonwealth Torres Strait Fisheries Act and the Native Title Act. Australia has obligations to protect both dugongs and traditional culture as a signatory to the Convention of Biological Diversity (Marsh et al. 2004:435). Various authors have called for the simultaneous consideration of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and Western Science and Management Knowledge (SMK) to provide a combined knowledge base for conservation problem solving (Butler et al. 2012; Garibaldi and Turner 2004). In this way, “Western science can support Indigenous passion for the land” (Wilson et al. 2010:258). Grayson et al. (2006:6) state that active involvement helps traditional practitioners: “(1) understand the implications of their level of harvest, (2) evaluate the effectiveness of their management strategies, and (3) help design changes as necessary. Thus monitoring has the potential to provide important feedback to communities about the value and effectiveness of managing their turtle and dugong fisheries.” A Specialized Indigenous Ranger Programme was instituted to effect collaboration between the government and traditional Boigu Island hunters. For biologists to track dugongs around the island chain, GPS trackers had to be attached. Local knowledge was critical in locating and catching dugong. The creation of islandspecific management plans guided by a steering committee of community leaders and hunters and the hiring of local rangers assured continuing cooperation (Butler et al. 2012). The recognition that the importance of dugong hunting is not simply the procurement of food, but rather an integral part of the fabric of Boigu Islander life is important in understanding the community’s stake in the success of these programs. The sustainability of the fishery is critical for the continuation of “Ailan Kastom” (the island way of life), including passing forward traditional knowledge and practices to the next generation (Marsh et al. 2004). The incorporation of hunters as rangers fits into the existing social framework. In 1987, hunters on Boigu often held paid positions as skilled mechanics and carpenters. To the younger people, hunters appear to be forward-looking, modern men. To the elders, skilled hunters continue a proud and defining tradition. Boigu Island hunters, therefore, get support and acclaim from young and old. This recognition is enhanced by the respect afforded hunters by participation in the Indigenous Rangers Program.

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Conclusion Large prey like dugongs provide a special set of opportunities and constraints for human hunters, and these properties invoke a predictable suite of responses in terms of preferences, attempts at intensification and risk reduction, embeddedness in the cultural, social, and ritual systems, and the potential for differential economic success. Garibaldi and Turner (2004) use the term “cultural keystone species” to describe such culturally important species and suggest that linkages between TEK and SMK knowledge bases are most likely to work in these cases. Indigenous participation and control of decision making create a new “holistic” approach to management (Barham et al. 2004:58). Considering the predictable association of large game with prestige systems, the Torres Strait material offers a valuable model for involving indigenous groups in the management of large game. The recognition and use of Traditional Ecological Knowledge benefits conservation efforts, while the award of respect and prestige by the scientific community works in tandem with existing cultural practices to continue to reward indigenous hunters for their skills and knowledge. Local management of the resources also allows the next generation to reconnect with spiritual forces through the cultural revitalization of traditional lifeways. A study by Delisle et al. (2017) asked Islanders from Mabuiag and St. Paul’s to rank the importance of hunting dugong as providing community, family, or individual values. 1 All of these were seen as instrumental in keeping Islan Pasin (the customary way of life). Family value as fresh food for home consumption was noted, and the individual benefits were prestige and health. While dugong hunting continues to have significant rewards for all three realms, community values were ranked the highest, including maintaining sharing, community unity, and a spiritual connection to the sea.

References Barham, A.J., M.J. Rowland, and G. Hitchcock. 2004. Torres Strait bepotaim: An overview of archaeological and ethnoarchaeological investigations and research. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, Cultural Heritage Series 3 (1): 1–72. Beckett, J. 1987. Torres Strait Islanders: custom and colonialism. Cambridge University Press. Butler, J.R.A., A. Tawake, T. Skewes, L. Tawake, and V. McGrath. 2012. Integrating traditional ecological knowledge and fisheries management in the Torres Strait, Australia: The catalytic role of turtles and dugong as cultural keystone species. Ecology and Society 17 (4): 34. https:// doi.org/10.5751/ES-05165-170434. Delisle, A., M. Kim, N. Stoeckl, and F. Lui. 2017. The socio-cultural benefits and costs of the traditional hunting of dugongs Dugong dugon and green turtles Chelonia mydas in Torres Strait, Australia. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0030605317001466. 1

Mabuiag and St. Paul Islands are located near Boigu Island.

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Garibaldi, A., and N. Turner. 2004. Cultural keystone species: Implications for ecological conservation and restoration. Ecology and Society 9 (3): 1. Retrieved from http://www. ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss3. Gill, Re, and W. Wyatt. 1876. Life in the southern isles, or scenes and incidents in the South Pacific and New Guinea. London: Oxford University. Grayson, J., H. Marsh, and M. Hamann. May 2006. Information to assist Torres Strait islanders manage their traditional fisheries for dugongs and green turtles. Final project report prepared for the Ocean Park Conservation Foundation. Haddon, A.C., ed. 1912. Reports of the Cambridge anthropological expedition to Torres Straits: Arts and crafts. Vol. 4. London: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1935. Reports of the Cambridge anthropological expedition to Torres Straits. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haddon, A.C., and W.H.R. Rivers. 1904. Totemism. In Reports of the Cambridge anthropological expedition to Torres Straits: Sociology, magic and religion of the Western Islanders, 153–193. London: Cambridge University Press. Haddon, A.C., C.G. Seligmann, and A. Wilkin. 1904. Magic and religion. In Sociology, magic and religion of the Western Islanders, Reports of the Cambridge anthropological expedition to Torres Straits, ed. A.C. Haddon, vol. 5, 320–378. London: Cambridge University Press. Harris, A., G. Drews, J. Kerr, and I. Poiner. 1995. Monitoring the traditional and Island-based catch if the Torres Strait protected zone. CSIRO Research Report, Division of Fisheries. Heinsohn, Robert, Robert C. Lacy, David B. Lindenmayer, Helene Marsh, Donna Kwan, and Ivan R. Lawler. 2004. Unsustainable harvest of dugongs in Torres Strait and Cape York (Australia) waters: Two case studies using population viability analysis. In Animal Conservation forum, vol. 7, 417–425. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hudson, B.E.T. 1986. The hunting of dugong at Daru, Papua New Guinea, during 1978-1982: Community management and education initiatives. In The Torres Strait fisheries seminar, ed. A.K. Haines, G.C. Williams, and D. Coates, 77–94. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Johannes, R.E., and J.W. MacFarlane. 1991. Traditional fishing in the Torres Strait Islands. Hobart: CSIRO Division of Fisheries. Johannes, R.E., and Barbara Neis. 2007. The value of anecdote. In Fishers’ knowledge in fisheries science and management. Coastal management sourcebooks, vol. 4, 41–58. UNESCO Publishing. Kwan, Donna, Helene Marsh, and Steven Delean. 2006. Factors influencing the sustainability of customary dugong hunting by a remote indigenous community. Environmental Conservation 33 (2): 164–171. Laade, W. 1971. Oral traditions and written documents on the history and ethnography of the northern Torres Straits islands, Saibai-Dauan-Boigu. Adi-myths, legends, fairy tales. Vol. 1. Stuttgart, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag. Landtman, G. 1920. Religious beliefs and practices of the Kiwai-speaking Papuans. In Unexplored new guinea, ed. W.N. Beaver, 301–316. London: Seeley, Service. Marsh, H., C. Eros, P. Corkeron, and B. Breen. 1999. A conservation strategy for dugongs: Implications of Australian research. Marine and Freshwater Research 50 (8): 979–990. Marsh, H., I.R. Lawler, D. Kwan, S. Delean, Kenneth Pollock, and M. Alldredge. 2004. Aerial surveys and the potential biological removal technique indicate that the Torres Strait dugong fishery is unsustainable. Animal Conservation 7: 435–443. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S1367943004001635. McNiven, I. 2003. Saltwater people: Spiritscapes, maritime rituals and the archaeology of Australian indigenous seascapes. World Archaeology 35 (3): 329–349. https://doi.org/10. 1080/0043824042000185757. McNiven, I., and R. Feldman. 2003. Ritually orchestrated seascapes: Hunting magic and dugong bone mounds in Torres Strait, NE Australia. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 13 (2): 169–194.

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Raven, Shelly. 1990. The point of no diminishing returns: Hunting and resource decline on Boigu Island, Torres Strait, Australia. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis. Riley, E.B. 1925. Among Papuan Headhunters. Service and Company: Seeley. Singe, J. 1979. The Torres Strait: People and history. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Wilson, G.R., M. Edwards, and J. Smits. 2010. Support for indigenous wildlife management in Australia to enable sustainable use. Wildlife Research 37: 255–263.

Dr. Shelly Tiley is a cultural anthropologist retired from California State University, Sacramento. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork among the Boigu Islanders of the Torres Straits, as well as numerous groups in California and the Great Basin. Her areas of specialization include native beliefs, natural resource utilization, conservation, and indigenous rights to cultural resources.

Chapter 10

Shadow of the Whale: West Coast Rituals Associated with Luring Whales John R. Johnson

Abstract Most native peoples along the Pacific Coast of North America viewed whales as an important subsistence item. Some Alaskan and Northwest groups developed a whale hunting culture, and nearly all coastal dwellers exploited stranded whales, providing abundant meat and oil for consumption. Many rock art sites along the coast between Alaska and Acapulco contain images of whales and other cetaceans, and portable effigies depict these marine mammals. Chumash, Alaskan, and Northwest Coast shamans used whale effigies in rituals designed to summon the whales to be hunted and/or beach themselves in one’s territory. A survey of the ethnographic literature investigates the extent to which these rituals sought the assistance of a Supernatural Gamekeeper or Animal Master. At least some whale depictions in carved effigies and rock art likely resulted from such rituals. Keywords Whaling subsistence · Whaling rituals · Imitative magic · Mythology · Animal masters · Rock Art · Alutiiq · Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) · Makah · Haida · Tillamook · Tolowa · Yurok · Mattole · Ohlone (Costanoan) · Chumash · Nicoleño · Cochimí · Cuitlatecans

Introduction Although the notion of a Supernatural Gamekeeper or Animal Master is widespread in the Neotropics (see Chacon, this volume; Chapman 1992) and present in certain regions of North America (Alexander 1916:292; Hulkrantz 1961a, b; Dye, this volume, Garfinkel, this volume), a thorough survey as to whether the Supernatural Gamekeeper concept applies to Pacific Coast hunter-gatherer societies has not until now been undertaken. In western North America, a nearly universal belief existed that ritual appeals to animal spirits would lead to success in hunting and fishing, and J. R. Johnson (✉) Department of Anthropology, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, Santa Barbara, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. J. Chacon (ed.), The History and Environmental Impacts of Hunting Deities, Conflict, Environment, and Social Complexity 4, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37503-3_10

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Fig. 10.1 Indigenous societies mentioned in the text

imitative magic frequently characterized such rituals, often conducted by special practitioners (Heizer 1978:650–651; Jorgensen 1980:297, 573). The question may be asked, to what extent did these rites represent entreaties to a Supernatural Gamekeeper? In a recent symposium devoted to whale depictions in rock art, the author investigated the cultural importance of whales among peoples residing along North America’s Pacific Coast (Johnson 2017). For maritime hunter-gatherers, occasional whale strandings provided an unpredictable boon to the local subsistence economy. Only a few native groups along the Northwest Coast and Alaska actively hunted whales, but exploitation of stranded animals was widespread (see Fig. 10.1). One archaeological study calculated that whale meat and blubber may have accounted for up to 90 percent of the meat and fat intake of the prehistoric Makah whale hunters who lived at the coastal site of Ozette on the Olympic Peninsula. Most

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of the identifiable bones came from humpback (Megaptera novaeangliae) and California gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus), a finding consistent with species identifications derived from excavations at prehistoric Nuu-chah-nulth sites on the outer coast of Vancouver Island (Huelsbeck 1988; McMillan 2015; Monks et al. 2001). Artistic representations of cetaceans occur ethnographically and archaeologically all along North America’s Pacific Coast, extending as far south as Acapulco (Manzanilla and Mena 2016:157). The present study explores the use of imitative magic by shamans in coastal societies to lure whales and other cetaceans ashore in order to provide sustenance, oil, and bone and investigates whether shamanic rituals were linked to the concept of a Supernatural Gamekeeper. Furthermore, this study examines ethnographic evidence to determine the extent to which representations of whales in rock art and carved portable effigies were linked to these rituals.

Arctic Whale Hunting Beliefs and Rituals Whale hunting was an important focus within the subsistence regime of coastal Arctic peoples. Special status accrued to the men who practiced this dangerous profession, who among some groups belonged to whalers’ secret societies with special rites of initiation (Black 1977:99; Clark 1984:187–189; De Laguna 1934:46–47; Haakanson and Steffian 2009:82; Heizer 1941; Johnson 2005; Lantis 1938, 1984:176; Sheehan 1985; Spencer 1984:320–323). Shamanic rituals, as well as public ceremonials, were held both prior to initiating a whale hunt and upon successful accomplishment of that quest in order “to appease the spirits who would, in return, send more whales” (Lantis 1984:179). The Western Eskimo conceived of a marine god or Food-Giver, who in one example of native art is depicted standing on a whale. Significantly, this particular example appears decorating a gorget worn in a shaman’s dance (Alexander 1916: Plate III). Among other groups of Eskimo (Inuit), this supernatural gamekeeper was described in mythology as a female goddess named Sedna, being mistress over the whales and other ocean creatures (Alexander 1916:289; Hulkrantz 1979:62; Millan 1987:19–20, 208). Amulets and talismans were part of the shamanic paraphernalia used to prepare ritually for hunting whales, as well as for pursuing other marine mammals, the purpose being to attract the animals to the hunter through supernatural means. Such magical charms often include depictions of whales. Some known examples include a plaque with a carved whale and embedded quartz crystal suspended in the bow of an umiak, a line weight carved in the shape of a whale, and a whale effigy box containing harpoon blades used in the hunt. Chipped stone charms, shaped like whales, were sometimes attached to the hunter’s clothing or kept in his special charm box (Fitzhugh and Crowell 1988:168–169). Whale images depicted in petroglyphs at Cape Alitak and Marka Bay in the Kodiak Island Group and in Cook Inlet pictographs likely had a similar purpose (Baird 2003, 2006; Clark 1970; De Laguna 1956:108; Fagan 2008:68–69; Heizer 1947:288; Knebel 2013).

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Northwest Coast Whale Hunting Beliefs and Rituals South of Alaska, whale hunting existed along the west coast of Vancouver Island and around the Olympic Peninsula. Among the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka), Makah, Clallam, Quileute, Quinault, and perhaps even the Chinook, whalers derived great prestige from their success in the hunt (Arima and Hoover 2011:64; Densmore 1939:62; Drucker 1951:49, 1963:45–48; Kool 1982:36–37; Koppert 1930:55, 106; Lewis [1806] in Moulton 2003:325; Losey and Yang 2007; McMillan 2015:231–232; Olson 1936:44–48; Suttles 1990:458). Extensive ritual preparation occurred prior to the beginning of the whaling season. Details of these rituals are best documented for the Nuu-chah-nulth, the Makah, and the Quileute (Arima and Hoover 2011:39; Black 1999:32–33; Curtis 1916:20, 25, 37–39; Densmore 1939:47–49; Drucker 1951:160–170; Frachtenberg 1921; Koppert 1930:56–57; Waterman 1920a:38–40). John Jewitt, held captive at Yuquot on Nootka Island in 1803–1805, described how the Mowachaht chief Maquinna would retire to a private location where he would fast, undergo other physical torments, and abstain from sexual relations, during which time he would pray for success in whaling. No other hunter could harpoon a whale before the chief had made the first kill (Jewett [1820] 1975:36, 60). Drucker noted that “each sea hunter and chief had a secret place out in the bush which he visited during his purification rites.” In addition, “at the shrine [the chief] usually had charms and magical devices to insure his goal” (Drucker 1950:289). Chief Maquinna’s shrine, where his whale hunting rituals were conducted, was described by the French explorer Camile de Roquefeuil when he visited Yuquot in 1817. He reported that the shrine included skulls of great chiefs of the past and multiple carved wooden statues, interpreted by later anthropologists as whalingrelated supernaturals. In the back of the shelter were eight large whale effigies upon which the skulls were placed. He stated that when Maquinna was successful in a whale hunt, he would go at nighttime “to render homage to the sun for the success of the day and to offer to his ancestors a part of the prey.” Maquinna himself carved a whale to place in the shrine after concluding a ceremonial feast that followed the bringing in of a whale. This shrine later was moved and combined with a second chief’s shrine in the mid-nineteenth century to be placed on an island in Jewitt Lake a short distance from the Yuquot village (Jonaitis 2000:301–304). Under the direction of Franz Boas, native collaborator George Hunt purchased the Yuquot Whaler’s shrine in 1904 from the two chiefly owners for the American Museum of Natural History. At that time, four whale effigies remained (illustrated in (Jonaitis 1999:128–131). The spiritual preparations of the whaling ritualists among the Makah were arduous and involved appeals to one’s spirit helper and self-sacrifice: The career of a whaler, with its difficulties and dangers was believed to require the help of a particularly strong tumanos (guiding, protecting spirit) and the securing of such a tumanos was the whaler’s first task. In order to obtain the tumanos he bathed in a prescribed manner, and subjected himself to severe discipline and hardship. Having obtained a tumanos, he

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continued the discipline before starting on a whaling expedition. At such a time, he went to the ocean, bathed and prayed for success, this being followed by rubbing his body with herbs or hemlock branches. Much stress was placed upon prayers and the help of a tumanos in whaling, it being said “if a man is to do a thing that is beyond human power he must have more than human strength for the task.” . . . A whale usually started for the open sea after being speared, but it was said that if a man had a good tumanos the whale would start toward shore as soon as he had speared it. Each whaler had a song which had been given by a tumanos to him or his father or grandfather. He believed this song had great power [Densmore 1939:47–48].

The whaler’s wife also had to undergo certain observances, being identified with the whale itself through sympathetic magic and song among the Nuu-chah-nulth: Whales were ritually treated from the beginning of the hunt. In addition to the vigorous bathing of the harpooner and his crew, the whaler’s wife had an imporant ritual part once the actual hunt began. She represented the whale, for the time being, and had to lie quietly on her bed, covered with new mats. If she moved about, the whale was restless, and difficult or impossible to approach. A slug was often put on top of the mats that covered her, to show by its movements which way the whale turned. A variation of this practice was related by a Moachat [Mowachaht] informant, who claimed the whaler’s wife lay down only after the whale was struck, when a small canoe brought the harpoon shaft ashore to place it over the bed. Her remaining motionless on the bed caused the wounded cetacean to run but a short ways. . . . Some of the [whale] towing chants used by whalers reflect interesting concepts. The whale was addressed by the title for “chief’s wife,” or “Queen” (to use the interpreter’s usual term), [and] was attracted to the whaler’s wife . . . The informants considered that the whaler meant by this to tell the whale that his (the whaler’s) wife was a supernatural treasure [Drucker 1951:177–178].

Elaborate ceremonials followed the completion of a successful hunt. In Nuu-chahnulth and Makah practice, the dorsal fin “saddle” of the whale would be removed, and a three or four-day ceremony, including special songs and dances, would serve to honor the whale (Curtis 1916:40; Densmore 1939:63–66; Drucker 1950:220; 1951:178–180). A Nuu-chah-nulth myth describes the dorsal fin of the whale as an animate object that magically could sing (Golla 2000:142–143). Decorated cedar carvings of dorsal fins and other art underscored the ritual adoration of the whale. A dorsal fin carving was displayed prominently in the chief’s house at Yuquot in 1774 (Arima and Dewhirst 1990:398–399, Fig. 4; Schurcliff and Ingelfinger 1993:36), and another carving, ornately decorated with 700 sea otter teeth, was famously recovered during archaeological excavations at the Ozette Site on the outer coast of the Olympic Peninsula (Daugherty and Friedman 1976:184–185; Kirk 2015:31–33; Wessen 1990:421, Fig. 11). Just south of Ozette, at Cape Alava, five petroglyphs of whales may be found distributed along the shore (see Fig. 10.2), including an image of a human figure holding a whale or whale effigy (Ellison 1979; Hill and Hill 1974:68–71). The creation of this rock art may have served the whalershaman’s purpose to charm the whales in order increase the chances of his success.

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Fig. 10.2 Cape Alava Whale Petroglyphs, Makah Territory (photograph courtesy of Rick Bury, used with permission)

Northwest Coast Practices Pertaining to Whale Strandings Those Northwest Coast societies that did not practice whale hunting nonetheless harvested meat, oil, and bones from stranded animals along the shoreline (Drucker 1963:49). Both groups that practiced whaling and those who did not claimed whales that beached themselves in their village territory. The chiefs would decide who would get which portion of the whale that washed ashore, and the discoverer would be rewarded with special gifts (Barnett 1939:233; Boas 1894:157; Drucker 1951:255–256; Hajda 1990:507; Olson 1936:47; Ray 1938:14). The Haida were among those Northwest Coast groups not hunting whales, but who used stranded animals. As with the Nuu-chah-nulth and the Makah, the “saddle” around the dorsal fin was reserved for the Haida chief (Drucker 1950:282). Peoples further south, along the Oregon coast, also exploited stranded whales. One or two would wash ashore each year and provide sustenance in the form of meat and oil rendered from the blubber (Barnett 1937:166; St. Clair and Frachtenberg 1909:28; Drucker 1939:84; Swan [1857] 1972:360). When Lewis and Clark were camped near the mouth of the Columbia River in January 1806, they learned of a large whale that had come ashore in coastal Tillamook territory. Clark immediately set off to obtain some of the meat for his party. Nearing their destination, he “met 14 Indians, men and women, loaded with the oil and blubber of the whale.” When he arrived at the location where the whale had stranded, he found that only a 105-foot-long skeleton

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remained. Clark and his men then went to the nearest Tillamook village, where they “found the natives busily engaged boiling the blubber, which they performed in large square wooden troughs by means of hot stones.” He noted that the oil when extracted was then “secure[d] in bladders and the guts of the whale” (Moulton 2003:313–315). Like those groups who practiced whale hunting, tribes who exploited stranded animals would conduct rituals whose purpose was to lure whales ashore near their community. The Haida conceived of ruling powers, in the sky, the sea, and on land, but overall was the “Power of the Shining Heavens,” who was a “mighty giver of food” (Swanton 1905:14). The Haida prayed and gave special offerings to the Ocean-People, praying “I give this to you for a whale; give one to me, chief.” The expectation was that a whale would soon be found near the place that such offerings were made (Swanton 1905:18). Some stories were told of shamans who developed exceptional powers to bring whales ashore whenever they so desired (Joyce 1903:92). Along the coast both north and south of the Columbia River mouth, people sang special songs to summon the whales to beach themselves (Antoniou 2021:257; Barnett 1937:166; Boas 1923:16), and certain shamans were reputed to possess supernatural power and/or particular charms that brought whales to their special cove along the coast (Boas 1898b:148; Jacobs 2003:182–183; St. Clair and Frachtenberg 1909:31). A Nehalem Tillamook recited the following tradition: Thunder power, that’s the same as Whale power. Thunder is a person all the time, looks like an Indian man, only he is a great big person. Sometimes he makes himself look like a bird, a great big black bird. That Thunder lives up in the sky. He comes to fish for whale; they’re just little fish for him. He is very powerful. He’ll kill a whale and send it to the man who knows him. He’ll tell the man he’s going to send it. A whale will come ashore on the sand, drawn there by the man with Thunder power [Jacobs 2003:182].

Whale depictions in rock art, including some killer whale images, are notable along the east coast of Vancouver Island and mainland coastal British Columbia where whale hunting was not practiced (Bentley and Bentley 1981:80; De Laguna 1956:108; McMurdo 1979:214–215; Meade 1971:58–59, 62–63). Northwest Coast rock art sites, as are those found in the Arctic, are typically directly adjacent to the sea, often at tide line, covered when the tide comes in and revealed when it recedes (Turpin 2001:377). A prevailing hypothesis about these petroglyph sites, which often are some distance removed from inhabited villages, is that they represent shrines or locations where shamans conducted rituals: It is assumed that these shrines were occupied only intermittently, when the shamans . . . went into retreat, to fast and dwell alone, to undergo ordeals, to commune with their guardian spirits, and conjure up visions of the supernatural beings and mythological creatures that occupied the shadows of their world. . . . These spirits and beings had to be placated. They were everywhere about, sometimes benevolent, sometimes dangerous. And what better way to appease the spirits, and at the same time pay them tribute, than to carve their representations in stone for all time [Meade 1971:12].

One of the famed supernatural creatures that figures prominently in mythology up and down the Northwest Coast is the giant Thunderbird. The Thunderbird was believed to feast on whales, and its bolts of lightening were used to kill whales to bring them to their lairs in the mountains (Boas 1898a:23–27; Drucker 1951:155;

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Jacobs 2003:182; Reagan and Walters 1933:320–321; Sapir 1919). The Tillamook told a story of the Thunderbird as being ths source of great power for a shaman who was able to obtain a whale for his people whenever they wanted one (Boas 1898a:23–27; Jacobs 2003:182–183), a belief clearly related to the association of certain Nuu-chah-nulth whaling chiefs with Thunderbird (e.g., Drucker 1951:Pl. 3; Kool 1982:38–39; Marshall 2000:122–123).

Northern California Beliefs and Practices Pertaining to Whale Beachings Cultural patterns similar to those observed further north extended southward along the California coast to the San Francisco Bay area, with a few notable exceptions. Tolowa, Yurok, Wiyot, Mattole, Sinkyone, Coast Yuki, and Costanoan (Ohlone) peoples all exploited beached whales to obtain meat and to render oil from blubber (Barnett 1937:166; Driver 1939:314; Drucker 1937; DuBois 1932:255; Geiger and Meighan 1976:88; Gifford 1939:299, 318; Kroeber 1925:14, 467; Kroeber and Barrett 1960:123–125; Nomland 1935:153, 1938:112; Waterman 1920b:220–221). According to Kroeber, “the Yurok prized its flesh above all other food, and carried dried slabs of the meat inland” (Kroeber 1925:84). However, coastal Pomoan groups and the Coast Miwok did not consume meat from stranded whales, at least according to native consultants interviewed in the early twentieth century (Loeb 1926:169; Kelly 1991:139). Their Ohlone/Costanoan neighbors just south of San Francisco Bay held the opposite point of view (Kroeber 1925:467; Manríquez and Escudé [1914] in Geiger and Meighan 1976:87). According to Fr. Francisco Palóu, who served at Mission San Francisco de Asís in the late eighteenth century: When a whale happens to be swept ashore they seize the occasion to celebrate a great feast, for they are very fond of its meat, which is pure blubber or fat. They cut it to pieces, roast it underground, and hang it up on trees; and when they want to eat of it they cut off a piece. They eat it with some other food of theirs. They do the same with seals, of which they are just as fond as of the whales, because seal, too, is all fat [Palóu (1787) 1955:193].

As was the case along the Northwest Coast, ownership rights accrued to the people in whose territory the whale washed ashore. For some northern California groups, the headman would determine who would receive what portion of the whale, but he would lay particular claim to the flippers, which were considered particular delicacies (DuBois 1932:255). The discoverer too might be given the right to special portions. Otherwise, the whale would be shared communally (Driver 1939:314; Nomland 1938:112; Pilling 1978:147). Elaborate rules pertained not only to who would get which piece but also designated the width of cut strips apportioned to each individual or family. Disputes sometimes arose over ownership rights or if someone cut his strips wider than was deemed proper (Drucker 1937:243; Kroeber and Barrett 1960:123–125; Waterman 1920b:220–221). Following the harvesting, celebratory “whale feasts” and dances are mentioned in ethnographic and ethnohistoric accounts

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pertaining to a number of groups (e.g., Gifford 1939:318; Palóu [1787] 1955:193; Powers [1877] 1976:67). With regard to shamanic practices or ritual activities pertaining to whales, it was reported among the Mattole that a “whale doctor” had the supernatural ability to predict the washing ashore of a beached animal (Kroeber and Barrett 1960:124). Among the Tolowa, as was the case for groups further north along the Oregon coast, singing was practiced to bring a floating whale ashore at a particular place (Barnett 1937:166; Drucker 1937:265). The Tolowa, like other groups in northwestern California, participated in ceremonial “world renewal” rituals whose purpose was to bring health, wealth, and abundant food and prevent unfavorable natural events during the coming year. During their girls’ puberty ceremony, celebrating a woman’s coming of age (when her magical power was considered greatest), it was deemed to be an auspicious time to pray for a whale to float ashore (Drucker 1937:263). Among indigenous groups practicing the world renewal religion in Northern California, a priest, who practiced fasting and other purifying forms of self-discipline, would pray on behalf of the group for harmony and balance in the world. He recited prayers passed down from prehuman deities that had existed in ancient times (Kroeber and Gifford 1949). Along with prayers, songs, and “whale doctors,” whales feature prominently in recorded myths from Northern California groups (Barrett 1933:190, 193; Kroeber 1932:909; Spott and Kroeber 1942:224–227; Gifford 1937:146–151). Despite such cultural similarities with the Northwest Coast, unlike that region, no rock art depictions of whales are reported from the Northern California coast.

“Shadow of the Whale:” Rituals Practiced by the Chumash and Their Neighbors Although archaeological evidence indicates that ancient maritime hunter-gatherers on California’s Channel Islands once hunted dolphins, no evidence exists that larger cetaceans were harpooned (Colten and Arnold 1998; Glassow 2005; Grant 1978b:526; Heizer 1974; Porcasi and Fujita 2000). Just as was the case with other Pacific coastal groups, strandings were a boon to local subsistence (Grant 1978a:517, Kroeber 1925:634; Landberg 1964:64; Yates 1891:375). Early Spanish observers noted that southern California’s coastal peoples exploited beached whales. To cite an early example, missionaries at Mission San Fernando wrote in 1814 that the indigenous peoples living along the coast (Ventureño Chumash and Gabrielino/ Tongva) were especially fond of whale meat as food (Geiger and Meighan 1976:85). Further south, Fr. Pedro Font wrote of his visit to San Diego in 1776 that among the Kumeyaay, . . . it is quite normal for an occasional whale to become stranded on those shores every year, and whenever this happens, the Indians at once inform one another and gather like flies to devoir it. They remain there on the shore until they finish it off [Font (1776) 2011:195].

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The most detailed ethnographic information that we possess regarding Chumash beliefs concerning whales comes from narratives recorded by J. P. Harrington from his ethnographic consultants (Harrington 1986). During interviews in 1912–1913 with Fernando Librado Kitsepawit, an elderly Chumash man of Island descent, Harrington documented the following description of traditional beliefs and practices pertaining to whales. The “old man” mentioned in this narrative appears to be an elderly Santa Cruz islander named Juan Cancio Tucupiahichet (1789–1865), baptized at Mission San Buenaventura in 1816 (Johnson 2001:56): And the old man [Juan Cancio Tucupiahichet] had there (at) his house a vertebra of the whale bien compuesto, and he said, “Behold, there is that vertebra. The being who carried that in his back is a whale, born in the ocean and as long as there is an ocean, those beings will be found there, there will always be whales.” This vertebra the Indian had had in his possession for a good many years. When Juan finished these remarks, Fernando was standing right close to him, and as he passed Fernando, he said: “That bone there was the seat of your grandmother.” Fernando did not see the seat well, for it was firelight. It looked beautiful. Fernando did not dare to go up to look at it closely. It was inlaid [with shell beads and/or ornaments] [Harrington (1913) 1986: Rl. 69, Fr. 465-466].

Both of Librado’s paternal and maternal grandmothers were from Santa Cruz Island (Johnson 1988:Fig. 8.1), so Juan Cancio Tucupiahichet’s comments indicate that whale-related artifacts were so highly regarded that they were brought by Chumash islanders when they moved to mission communities. Similar to the whale vertebra described by Librado, a number of modified whalebones, some decorated with beads and ornaments, have been discovered in ceremonial contexts at Chumash archaeological sites (Harrington 1928:134–135; Orr 1943; Rogers 1929:194, 208, 311, 415). Librado continued his narrative, describing how whale oil and meat were prepared and other families invited to the meal: As long as there is a sea, we will have whale. Whale is mother of all sea animals. Madre was the word old Juan used. All the world eats its meat. [The] blood of the whale was very useful and was added to the oil. The oil was said to be very useful for medicine and all uses there are in this world en que estamos. Took a long strip of whale meat a yard long and would take it home and build a lumbre falsa out of small wood, something that would produce smoke. Would put the fat on a stick and hold it over that smoke until it was pretty well smoked. Then put it on stick in sun and kept it there until dripping stopped, showing that there was no more oil in it. After this dripping had stopped it was in fine condition to use with atole or pinole. They would slice the fat in thick strips and put it to boil and when was thoroughly boiled they would put it over strips of some kind of wood or leaves overnight in the shade and the next day would come one or two families which they had previously invited to eat. They would spread their petates [mats] and on it would be placed various coras [baskets] and the feast would begin at 9 or 10 o’clock a.m. [Harrington (1913) 1986: Rl. 69, Fr. 466-467].

Once the dinner guests were seated, Librado recounted how the “mother of all sea animals” was honored: The lady of the house (madre de la casa) serves, apportioning food according to number present. She serves in quyiwaš (either jicara of wood or small cora). She gives each say a handful of atole, pinole and a piece of whale meat (which is on an old board where they have sliced it). And the madre de la casa, when she passes out to mother of family of invited guests says to her: take your ration, and remember that this meat is of the whale and remember that she is our protectress, were it not for her during the stormy times at sea that

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she attracts the forces of the storm towards in the high sea where she abides, the currents would come towards us and drown us all. The old madre de la casa made this talk to the other housemothers. No other grace. Merely ate. Never deprecate the whale! [Harrington (1913) 1986: Rl. 69, Fr. 469-470].

In the oral traditions of many Pacific Coast tribes, indeed in societies found around the world, there exist various versions of “Jonah” myths, in which the protagonist is swallowed by a whale and lives to emerge relatively unscathed (Le Quellec 2017). The Chumash were no exception. One of the oral narratives related by native speaker Mary J. Yee to J. P. Harrington tells the Barbareño Chumash story of c’iwok’o’, who out of greed, tricks his younger brother into climbing into a stranded whale’s mouth, where he becomes trapped inside: There was once a man whose name was c’iwok’o’. He liked to eat very much. All he thought about was eating. Then once upon a time c’iwok’o’ and his younger brother were walking along the beach; and they saw a whale coming ashore on the edge of the beach. And at that time that was the law (or the right) if they saw a whale washed ashore they had to give notice to their chief at the nearest town; the ones who live further, they come a little later so all the people could have had their share. . . . Because who would be able to finish up (or eat up) all the big whale? And this one was a really big whale. But c’iwok’o’ wanted to eat it all up all by himself. And he wanted to kill even his little brother. He didn’t want to give notice about the whale washed ashore so that he would have a big share of it himself. And so the poor whale entirely came up on shore and with his mouth open. c’iwok’o’ commanded his little brother to enter inside the mouth of the whale so that he would grab the fish inside the mouth. Because when the whale goes swimming around in the ocean, he always . . . keeps opening his mouth. Every time he opens his mouth he catches a lot of fish. c’iwok’o’ told his little brother: “You have plenty of time to hurry and enter his mouth. It would be good to enter and get some fish.” And so his little brother really entered quickly. And so when he did enter, then he said: “It is my big brother’s fault.” And the whale clamped his mouth shut. And his little brother was not quick enough to run out of there before the whale clamped his mouth shut. But it was a good thing that his little brother carried a tix’ò [chert knife]. When the whale swallowed, he (quickly) cut the whale’s ribs on the inside where he is going to get out. So there by the ribs of the whale that’s where he made his exit. Therefore, the whale died. He came out but he was all flayed from the juice of the whale’s belly [Yee 1956a].

When the younger brother of c’iwok’o’ emerged from the belly of the whale, he witnessed his older brother busy with the business of cooking what he had just cut from the whale: He came upon (or found) his big brother. And he was already boiling the meat of the whale in a kiwš [soapstone pot]. His big brother thought that he was going to eat up the whole whale all by himself. He had thought that his little brother was no more, so that he would not be eating any more. His little brother, when he came out, he mistrusted his big brother and was peeved at him: “He must have thought that I was dead. You should have cut and given me some and have given some to the other people. If you don’t give, there will arise a big war,” said his little brother. In addition, soon his little brother saw the armies were already coming. In addition, there were many men. He hollered to his big brother: “Go on – come to help me.” And the big brother did not pay attention but kept on eating. He wasn’t noticing anything. And the arrows were already coming. The war party was already coming for the whale. So at last, the little brother went over and broke the kiwš where his big brother was boiling the whale meat. But his big brother didn’t even get mad. He took the best piece of broken kiwš and continued boiling the whale. c’iwok’o’ says: “This is nothing,” because he

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had his charm. He killed off nearly all the enemy by using his charm. And so he continued boiling the whale . . . he wanted to take everything himself. Pretty soon [people] came from a nearby ranchería, and so each person would take some pieces of whale meat and would return with it to his home to boil it. They thought it was funny that c’iwok’o’ thought he was going to eat all the whale by himself. And so at last just the bones of the whale remained. And that too they took some of them (a few) home [Yee 1956a].

The story of c’iwok’o’ exemplifies many of the cultural patterns repeated elsewhere all along the Pacific Coast of North America. Stranded whales were a subsistence boon to the people. They belonged to those in the village closest to where they came ashore, protocols existed regarding who received what share, and beached whales were valuable enough to be fought over. Whalebones were recovered too and brought back to the village to be worked into tools and other items of material culture. The mention of c’iwok’o’ possessing a charm highlights a further aspect of Chumash shamanistic practice. According to Mary Yee, charms were not just used as talismans to work magic on one’s enemies. Chumash shamans used miniature effigies of stone or wood that depicted canoes or whales as charms to aid in fishing or in luring whales ashore, respectively. She referred to shamans who used whale charms as “whale dreamers” (Harrington 1986: Rl. 60, Fr. 597; Rl. 61, Fr. 129, 313). At least one Ventureño Chumash ethnographic consultant called these miniature whales ts’aqwɨtɨy ‘i paxat “shadow of whale” (Harrington 1986:Rl. 72, Fr. 128). The term’aqwɨtɨy not only held the common meaning of a “shadow” but also might refer symbolically to the spiritual essence of things (Henry 2012:18, 111). Archaeologist have found miniature whale effigies during excavations at coastal sites along the Santa Barbara Channel and on both the Northern and Southern Channel Islands. David Banks Rogers discovered several examples in 1926 in a feature that he interpreted as a coastal shrine at a prehistoric habitation site up the coast from Santa Barbara (Hudson and Blackburn 1986:178, 197–198; Rogers 1929:388, Plate 74). This site, CA-SBA-81, is estimated to date to a few centuries earlier than 2000 years ago (King 1990:28, 34), indicating the antiquity of the use of whale effigies in the region. Other miniature whale sculptures were discovered on Santa Catalina and San Nicolas islands during early investigations by Paul Schumacher and Léon de Cessac in the 1870s (Abbott 1879:220–221; Cessac [1882] 1951; Hudson and Blackburn 1986:175–194). Although a number of museums possess whale effigies of carved steatite, schist, and shale in their collections, well-documented examples are rare (see Figs. 10.3a–c). Following publications of actual archaeological finds, certain unscrupulous opportunists realized that they could carve their own whale effigies and sell them to unsuspecting museums and private collectors by falsely claiming prehistoric origin (Gamble 2002; Hoover 1974; Lee 1993). To what extent did Chumash shamanistic practices regarding whale dreaming echo concepts involving a supernatural gamekeeper? As noted above, an elderly Island Chumash man spoke to a belief that the whale was mother of all sea creatures, but according to Barbareño Chumash tradition, it was the swordfish who served as

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Fig. 10.3 (a) Miniature whale effigy from Santa Catalina Island, bluish-gray schist, 8.6 cm (Abbott 1879:Fig. 101). (b) Whale effigy from Las Llagas, Santa Barbara County, shale, 12.3 cm (courtesy of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History). (c) Cetacean effigies from San Nicolas Island collected by Léon de Cessac, Musée du quai Branly, Paris (John R. Johnson photograph)

chief over the denizens of the ocean (Yee 1956b). Indeed, the swordfish was held responsible for driving whales ashore to provide food for the people (Bowers 1878:319; Davenport et al. 1993; Rogers 1929:410). The Sea People: The ‘elye’wun are men. They have no wives or children or anything. When they catch a whale they throw it out of the water. They just toss it—and you know how big a whale is. The ‘elye’wun are called swordfish in English [Blackburn 1975:94]. They thought that when the swordfish sticks his head out of the ocean, he is throwing ashore a whale for the benefit of the people [Harrington 1986: Rl. 59, Fr. 224]. They say that it is the swordfishes that chase whales ashore. It is only when chased that whales come ashore. They worship the swordfish for he brings the people the whale [Harrington 1986: Rl. 59, Fr. 218].

Swordfish pictographs occur at several locations in the Central Chumash region (Bury 2016; Davenport et al. 1993; Gibson and Singer 1970). A more widespread “aquatic motif” perhaps symbolizes either the swordfish or cetaceans (Grant 1965:84; Hudson and Conti 1981). Recognizable depictions of whales in rock art are virtually absent in Chumash territory, although one site near Buellton in the Santa Ynez Valley appears to illustrate a breaching whale or dolphin (Ross

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Fig. 10.4 Cave of the Whales pictographs, CA-SNI-144, San Nicolas Island (drawn by Kathleen Conti, used with permission)

1981:24). At a well-studied rock art site in Purisimeño Chumash territory, an image opposite a prominent swordfish painting conceivably depicts a whale (Bury 2016:183). Certainly, the association of the swordfish in close proximity to what may be a whale pictograph would be expected if rituals were conducted at the site to encourage the swordfish “master” to cause a whale to beach itself. Such a hypothesis has been advanced previously with regard to the underlying purpose behind the ethnographically documented Chumash swordfish dance, which may have been performed to persuade the swordfish shaman’s dream helper to provide food during annual whale migrations. Migrations of the California gray whale, when whale strandings were most likely to take place, occurred during winter months when food shortages were most severe (Davenport et al. 1993:269; Woodhouse 1991). The most spectacular rock art site containing pictographs and petroglyphs depicting cetaceans and fishes occurs at the Cave of the Whales on San Nicolas Island (Conti et al. 2002; Rozaire and Kritzman 1960) (see Fig. 10.4). Similar to

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whale petroglyphs documented at Cape Alitak on Kodiak Island, on Vancouver Island, and at Cape Alava south of Ozette, the Nicoleño rock art occurs directly adjacent to the ocean, in this case hidden within a cave into which the sea enters. Such locations on the boundaries between land and sea provided a liminal space for rituals conducted to seek superatural aid for bringing whales ashore. It is interesting to note that a 1926 sketch map of San Nicolas Island contains a comment that “castup whales” had been observed near where the Cave of the Whales was later discovered (Bryan 1970). Many sites on San Nicolas Island contain whale bones and tools maufactured from whale bones. A hilltop shelter built by the famous Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island was built with a framework of whale bones (Morgan 1979). In addition to the rock art at Cave of the Whales, ritual activities by shamans akin to those conducted by the coastal Chumash are suggested by the frequent occurrence of minature cetacean effigies discovered in archaeological contexts. For example, in 1878, the French archaeologist Léon de Cessac discovered a single cache of about twenty stone effigies during archaeological explorations on San Nicolas Island. These depictions included several different species of whales (see Fig. 3c and Cessac [1882] 1951).

Further South A survey of the cultural importance of whales in Pacific coastal societies would be incomplete without some consideration given to native peoples of Baja California and western Mexico. In the 1640s, Pedro Porter described both an abundance of whales in the vicinity of Cabo San Lucas and their importance to the subsistence of the Pericú people of the cape region: . . . they crossed from the Gulf of California to the Cabo de San Lucas . . ., and they found great number of whales in the entrance of the [Gulf of] California (Porter [1644] 1970a:825–826). The people in [the vicinity of] Cabo San Lucas and bay of San Bernabé . . . gave to us fish and some things of the land which they eat – tuna, salmon, sardines, cod. There . . . were seen in this port alone more than 3 thousand Indians, . . . they saw a whale and in 5 days, they made pedaços and carried loads of meat to their rancherías (Porter [1643] 1970b:797–798). A whale washed up on the coast and in five days, the Indians cut it to pieces with their axes, which are of stone. The Indians to the interior with whom they wage war and are called the Guaycuras, wished to come to the whale, but the coastal Indians made it understood that they needed the help of the Spanish, and they took them to some hills from which they saw a large number of Indians with their arms who knew that the others had strangers to aid them, and this made the Indians of [our] kingdom very grateful (Porter [1645] 1992:251).

Archaeological investigations at Baja California sites show that whales were scavenged for food and their bones used by indigenous peoples for tools just as they were farther north (Des Lauriers 2010; Gruhn and Bryan 2006).

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Fig. 10.5 Giant whale pictograph, 6 m, at Cueva de los Toños, Baja California (panorama image using DStretch YRE enhancement, courtesy of Jon Harman, used with permission)

The mountains of the Baja California peninsula north of La Paz have long been noted for their spectacular rock paintings, including Cochimí great mural art that includes striking images of many forms of marine life (see Fig. 10.5). Among other representational figures portraying humans and animals are depictions of whales and other cetaceans, some of giant size (Brewer 1978; Cover 1990; Crosby 1997; Grant 1974; Gutiérrez and Hyland 2002; Harman 2007, 2018; Lara et al. 2021). Grant postulates that those pictographs featuring game animals were part of an effort by the artist-shaman to seek supernatural aid to facilitate their acquisition for sustenance (Grant 1974:126). Even further south, along the west coast of Mexico, at the margin of Puerto Marqués near Acapulco, are large granite rocks right next to sea bearing sizable petroglyphs depicting a breaching whale and a swordfish (see Fig. 10.6). Archaeological investigations at a buried midden site on the shore of the bay reveal a long record of maritime subsistence extending back in time to perhaps as early as 5500 years ago (Kennett et al. 2007; Manzanilla and Mena 2016). However, Cabrera (2006) suggests that the prehistoric art at Puerto Marqués likely dates to the Late Formative Period (400 B.C.E. to 1050 A.C.E.) based on comparisons with other sites with petroglyph art in the Acapulco region. The language of the area, Cuitlatecan, was spoken by the indigenous people for some two hundred miles along the coast, according to early Spanish records (Thomas and Swanton 1911:50–51). By the time of Spanish contact, this region, known as Cihuatlán, had become a tributary province of the Aztec empire (Smith and Berdan 1996:277).

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Fig. 10.6 Puerto Marqués petroglyphs of a swordfish and breaching humpback whale (Interpretive panel, Palma Sola Zona Arqueológica, Instituto Nacional Antropología e Historia)

Conclusion As this survey indicates, depictions of whales in art and iconography occur in nearly all societies along North America’s Pacific Coast, from Alaska to Acapulco (see Table 10.1). This is not surprising given the important complement to subsistence that a whale represented to coastal peoples whenever a hunt was successful or a beaching occurred. Everywhere strandings happened, the people who lived closest claimed ownership, and societal rules prevailed regarding who could take what part of the animal to process for their family’s use. Ethnographic documentation regarding rituals and beliefs pertaining to whale capture or strandings are documented for the Arctic, Northwest Coast, northwestern California, and the coastal Chumash of southern California. Frequently these involved appeals to a supernatural entity or spirit helper that had some control or influence over whales, including the Thunderbird on the Northwest Coast and the Swordfish among the Chumash. Particular practitioners, who possessed spiritual talismans, e.g., whale effigies, would undertake prayers, rituals, and periods of self-sacrifice to lure the whale ashore or to ensure a hunter’s success. These efforts were undertaken to communicate either with the animal masters who held sway over whales or with the spirit of the whales themselves. Success was dependent upon appeasing and maintaining a good relationship

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Table 10.1 Cultural importance of whales for indigenous societies of North America’s Pacific Coast

Culture Alutiiq Haida Central Coast Salish Nuu-chahnulth Makah Quileute Quinault Chinook Tillamook Coos Tolowa Yurok Mattole Coast Yuki Ohlone/ Costanoan Chumash Nicoleño Kumeyaay Cochimí Pericú Cuitlatecans

Whale depictions in rock art X – X

Whale effigies and/or other visual arts X X ?

Whale hunting X – Xa

Exploitation of stranded whales X X X

Rituals to attract whales X X Unknown

Myths about whales X X X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X – – – – – – – – – –

X X – X – – – – – – –

X X X Opportunistic Opportunistic Opportunistic – – – – –

X X X X X X X X X X X

X X X X X X X Unknown X Unknown Unknown

X X X X X X X X – X –

X X – X – X

X X – – – Unknown

– – – – – –

X X X X (inferred) X Unknown

X Probable Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown

X Unknown – Unknown Unknown Unknown

a

Among Central Coast Salish groups, only the Clallam are known to have practiced whale hunting (Suttles 1990:458)

with these supernatural entities. Such beliefs and practices are very much in accord with the Supernatural Gamekeeper concept so widely held among other indigenous societies in the Americas and worldwide. Acknowledgments This study had its genesis as a presentation prepared for the Bangudae Petroglyphs International Symposium, “Whale on the Rock,” held in Ulsan, South Korea, on June 20-22, 2017. The author is grateful for the invitation to participate extended by Sang-Mog Lee, Director of the Ulsan Petroglyph Museum and to other symposium attendees who shared their research and perspectives regarding whale images found in rock art around the world. The author’s ideas regarding this topic further developed as a result of his participation in the “Supernatural Gamekeepers and Animal Masters” symposium, organized by Richard J. Chacon, that was held at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As research for this study progressed, other friends and colleagues contributed ideas and information. The author especially is

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indebted to Ernestine Ygnacio-De Soto, who helped identify Barbareño Chumash whale texts in her mother Mary J. Yee’s notebooks that had been translated by the late Madison Beeler. Among those who suggested references or aided in searching the literature were Carol and Rick Bury, Evan Connell, Janet Erro, Devlin Gandy, Al Knight, Jonathan Malindine, Susan Morris, Madonna Moss, Steve Schwartz, Matthew Vestuto, and Barbara Voorhies. Others shared images of whale-related artifacts and/or rock art, including the late Rick Bury, Kathleen Conti, Paul Goldsmith, Jon Harman, and Greg Orfalea. Colleagues at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History who helped to locate and identify whale-related artifacts in the museum’s collections were Paul Collins, Krista Fahy, Tacy Kennedy, and Jan Timbrook. Library Assistant Peggy Dahl and Anthropology Curatorial Assistants Kaleigh Blair, Destiny Harrell, and Kate Paulson aided by copying and scanning documents and images. The manuscript benefited from Thomas Blackburn’s editorial review.

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Dr. John R. Johnson is Curator Emeritus of Anthropology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has conducted ethnohistorical and archaeological investigations within California with particular emphasis on the Chumash and their neighbors. His research interests include long distance exchange, the rise of social complexity, warfare, genetics, and the impact of missionization of native peoples.

Chapter 11

Supernatural Gamekeeper: Yahwe’era, Sacred Narrative, and Rock Art, Tehachapi Mountains, California Alan P. Garfinkel

Abstract A dominant religious figure of many aboriginal hunting peoples is known as the master or mistress of game animals. This being is a central figure for the Southern Paiute (Numic) ethnolinguistic group known as the Kawaiisu. Ethnographic information, obtained across half a century, attests to the oral traditions documenting the Animal Master identified by the name Yahwera. Within Back Canyon, in the Tehachapi Mountains of eastern California, is a 13 meter tall limestone rock dome known as Yahwera’s House (Yahwera Kahnina). Significantly, a prominent rock painting, rendered largely in red pigment, adorns this stone monument. A robust inventory of Kawaiisu religious stories informs us as to the meaning, function, and character of the painted images. This invaluable archive of oral tradition provides us with details on the physical attributes of the Kawaiisu Animal Master. Further, this mythic narrative informs as to the nature and function of his/her home. The cosmogenic myths give us important details as to the other animal humans inhabiting the Master’s underworld domain and details the supernatural gifts the Gamekeeper offers to visitors. This robust set of oral traditions, corresponding ethnogeography, and related rock art record provides a remarkable picture of the relationships between an archaeological feature and its indigenous cultural significance. Keywords Animal Master · Animal Mistress · Mother of Animals · Kawaiisu · Tehachapi Mountains · Back Canyon · Yahwera · Pictograph · Oral tradition

Introduction The dominant religious figure or “immortal” of many hunting peoples is known as “the master or mistress of the game animals” (Campbell 1988:77–78; Garfinkel 2006:210–211; Harrod, 2000:47–60; Hays-Gilpin 2000:183–185; Hultkrantz 1961,

A. P. Garfinkel (✉) California Rock Art Foundation, Bakersfield, CA, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. J. Chacon (ed.), The History and Environmental Impacts of Hunting Deities, Conflict, Environment, and Social Complexity 4, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37503-3_11

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1981, 1987a, b; Lee and Daly 1999; Miller 1983:69; McNeil 2002, 2005, 2008; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971; Slotten 1965; Whitley 2000:79). The central idea is that culturally important animals have their own supernatural ruler. This guardian deity is a protector of animals and offers or withholds them from human hunters. It is believed, by a great number of indigenous peoples, that game animals cannot be killed without the permission of this deity and that animals are in some instances immortals themselves, able to regenerate, and return in renewed bodies after their death. It is the Supernatural Gamekeeper that is the agent responsible for the regeneration of these animals and facilitates reintroduction into the human world from their ethereal homes (Underwood 2006).

Great Basin Paiute and Shoshone Carling Malouf (1966:4) observed that the Great Basin Paiute and Shoshone (Numic branch of Uto-Aztecan) religious practices had much in common with more complex societies and exhibited animal ceremonialism, group religious ceremonies, and associated big game hunting rites (contra Steward 1938). Ritual adepts often functioned in group ceremonies and shamanistic activities that have a meaningful relationship with certain hunting rites (Hultkrantz 1986:631; Malouf 1966). Numic oral traditions make specific reference to instances where game animals were reborn after their bones were properly treated and their supernatural powers harnessed for the increase of game (Hultkrantz 1987a, b:63). The Ute, Southern Paiute, Shoshone, and Kawaiisu believed that a supernatural being was able to transform into a bird (crow, raven, or small hawk) and controlled all animals, including bear, bighorn sheep, elk, antelope, and deer. This supernatural was sometimes associated with lower divinities that also provided game (Harris 1940:56; Hultkrantz 1986, 1987a, b; Steward 1936, 1941:230). The Ute and certain Southern Paiute groups thought that all animals were controlled by a snow-white Master of Animals, who lived high in the mountains, walked around in cloudy weather, and was able to transform into a raven (Hultkrantz 1986). Rituals that included a central ceremonial pole, originally a deciduous tree, was represented as a metaphor for death and rebirth. The tree goes through a process of “dying” (shedding its leaves and going into a relatively dormant state in winter) and then is reborn anew in the spring. The pole (an axis mundi) is a means of travel, a road for the Master of the Animals, helping to provide a safe return, means of reincarnation, and an aid for leading game animals back from the underworld to the tribal hunting grounds in the spring (cf. Hultkrantz 1987a, b; McNeil 2005, 2008).1 1

Metaphoric discontinuities existed between humans and animals. Such distinctions are prominently represented in Southern Numic ceremonies and sacred narrative. Central to the cosmology of the Numic was their views on life and death. Also of prominence were the principles of reciprocity between animals and people—critical was a proper posture of humankind toward the natural environment (Franklin and Bunte 1996). Sacred narratives are a key source for the central

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A recurrent Numic myth mentions the release of game animals by Coyote. Coyote opens the pen or cave where Wolf has kept the wild animals and they run away to his dismay. In some variations, it was a deity with both bird and human qualities, Crow and his people, who had the animals secluded, and it was Weasel that let them go. The deed, in some variants, is specifically of benefit to the Numic. In other variants, it is Coyote that reshapes the animals and adds mouths, ears, and eyes (Lowie 1924:62–64; Steward 1936:372–373; Thompson 1929:292–293). Diverse cultural groups of Uto-Aztecan linguistic affiliation developed varied traditions of religious belief and practice. It has been observed that while considerable diversity exists in religious beliefs and practices for the Great Basin Numic groups, some of them traditionally emphasized underworld supernatural beings, the importance of caves, caverns, and other subterranean places. Corridors of supernatural power and spiritual resources were found in these sacred underworld settings. Laird mentions the importance of caves as places of supernatural power for the Chemehuevi (1976: 38–39, 46)—a southern Paiute group who inhabited the eastern Mojave Desert of California. These caves were associated with inherited sacred songs, power in curing, a class of cave spirits, and the supernatural powers of the cave itself. Kelly and Fowler (1986) also mention supernatural underground travel among the Southern Paiute. Liljeblad (1986:652–653) discusses these supernatural underworld beliefs among Numic groups and describes their association with a master-of-animals type supernatural being: The fabulous idea of an otherworld or a secluded place from which game animals emerge ... or are finally released by the culture hero ... was commonly held in most parts of native North America, and can be assigned to the same category of mythological tales as other cosmogonic mythology (Thompson 1929:348). Independently of mythology, the belief in accidental visits to the mysterious world below was found throughout the Great Basin ..., reflected in a particular class of testimonial legends describing subterranean existence. The prototype of these legends, with local variants, relating visits to the lower world ..., occurs throughout a common cultural area comprising the western Great Basin ... Caves and other named localities, which remain sacred sites for the shamanistic power quest ..., are believed to have served formerly as entrances to the legendary underground pathway. The recurrent theme in these stories is the adventures of a hunter following a wounded animal to the lower world and his return after a time spent with the dwellers below.

existential postulates of Numic theology and relate to the content of iconic representations and the meaning of related ceremonies. It was a key covenant of the Numic that proper reverence for game animals was necessary lest they would be unable to let themselves be killed. Proper dances evidence gratefulness and supplicating prayers to the supernatural deities that were a necessary precondition for the coming of the rains, to ensure the continued fertility of humans, and for a generous abundance of game animals. Symbolic metaphors cover Numic ceremony. Annual rituals and cyclic ceremonies drew the Numic into union with the cosmos and affirmed the embedded cyclical patterns of the natural environment. Through replication of animal movements, use of animal headdresses and disguises, and by the willingness of the animals to sacrifice their lives, the Numic were only then able to ensure the seasonal changes, the transformation of day to night, and the regeneration and renewal of the world (cf. Franklin and Bunte 1996).

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As we shall see, this underworld tradition is not only relevant to Numic ideas about the supernatural world experienced by human beings, and expressed in rock art, but also to the association of rock art to caves and portals to this underworld setting. This connection was noted in a comment by John Peabody Harrington about the association of Kawaiisu rock art with a portal through a rock face leading to an underground domain inhabited by supernatural animals (Harrington 1986:Vol. III: Reel 98:151).

Kawaiisu Animal Master: Lord of the Underworld According to ethnographic information obtained across half a century by Maurice Zigmond, Stephen Cappannari, and Judy Barras (Barras 1984:30; Bibby 1999; Garfinkel et al. 2009; Garfinkel and Williams 2011; Zigmond 1977, 1980; Zigmond et al. 1990) an Animal Master, called Yahwe’ era, is a prominent, recurrent figure in Kawaiisu cosmology. The Kawaiisu are a southern Paiute ethnolinguistic group that in precontact times and into contemporary times inhabited the Tehachapi Mountains and the western Mojave Desert. These indigenous people were hunter-gatherers and they numbered about 500 people. Two groups have been recognized both the Mountain and Desert divisions (Underwood 2006). Yahwe’era is described in at least nine Kawaiisu myths, and discussions in the past with Kawaiisu elders (Harold Williams and Luther Girado, personal communication with Kawaiisu elders 2008) confirm the centrality of this supernatural being in both oral tradition and Native cosmology. Luther Girado provides a version of the Yahwe’era narrative in the Native Kawaiisu language on a DVD provided by the Kawaiisu Language and Cultural Center (Turner 2011:18). 2 Yahwe’era sacred narratives also are related to the text of a number of stories told by Kawaiisu northern neighbors—the Tübatulabal. The Tübatulabal call this immortal, Yahigal (C..F. Voegelin 1935:207; E. Voegelin 1938). The following composite storyline can be extracted from the robust corpus of Kawaiisu oral narratives: This is a true story. Long ago there was a man. The grandmother of Emma Williams had seen this man and told Emma this story. The man was sick or perhaps he just wanted luck. So to cure himself or to get that luck he took jimsonweed (alternatively fasted, swallowed tobacco,

2

The Yahwe’era narratives are found in the following accounts: Barras 1984: 30; Zigmond 1977:69–71; Zigmond 1977:93–94 (two versions), Zigmond 1980: 175–179 (three versions); Zigmond 1980:181–183 (two versions). Zigmond (1980: 175–183) identified the individuals who provided him with these narratives: Emma Williams, Setimo Girado, Marie Girado, and John Marcus. Andy Greene also shared a similar account via audio-taped interview (Bibby 1999). Contemporary individuals who have knowledge of Yahwe’era and shared information with me include: Kawaiisu elders—the late Harold Williams and Luther Girado, spiritual leader and Native speaker. See Garfinkel and Williams (2011) for an extensive discussion of contemporary and precontact Kawaiisu culture and cosmology.

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walked naked through stinging nettles, or ingested ants wrapped in eagle down). He then went to a place in Back Canyon (or another cave) and found the entrance to the animal underworld, Yahwe’era’s home. At that hole, that goes down into the mountain, was a rock that opened and closed. The man waited and slipped through quickly. He saw many different animals deer, bear, and others. These were animal-people who spoke just like the Kawaiisu. Near the mouth of the tunnel the man saw bows and arrows. These were the weapons by which deer were killed. The deer leave them when they go inside Yahwe’era’s house. The man also saw the horns of all the deer that have been killed. Yahwe’era said that the deer were not really dead. There were also many different kinds of luck on the cave walls. The man saw a bow and arrow of a good hunter in a prominent place and the bows and arrows of inferior hunters in subordinate positions. The man took something for his luck. The man began to walk through the tunnel. He stumbled and climbed over a large gopher snake (kogo). Farther along he came to a rattlesnake, as big as a log (tugu-baziitї-bї) and he climbed over it. Then there was a brown bear (mo’orii-zhi) that he passed and then he came to a grizzly bear (pogwitї) and went past it. Then he didn’t see any other animals. He kept walking and he saw Yahwe’era. Yahwe’era wore a mountain quail feather blanket or robe. He looked like a hawk. Yahwe’era asked the man, ‘What do you want?’ The man said he was sick and wanted to get well. Yahwe’era knew all about his illness—without being told. Yahwe’era gave him some acorn mush (alternatively pinyon or deer meat). Every time he ate some the same amount reappeared. He couldn’t eat it all. He gave it back to Yahwe’era. Yahwe’era took him into a room where he kept the medicine. Yahwe’era asked him which of the songs he wanted and Yahwe’era named all the songs. The man took a song. The man was ready to return home, so he kept going to the other end of the tunnel. He saw water that was like a window but it wasn’t water, he passed through and didn’t get wet. He came out and found he was far away from the entrance and wasn’t sick anymore. He had been gone for a long time and his relatives didn’t know where he had been.

Andy Greene (b. 1916 – d. 1999), prominent Kawaiisu elder, referred to Yahwe’era’s home as a place where the yellow bird (Yahwe’era) lives and where a supernatural giant rattlesnake (tugu-baziitu-bu) resides (Krupp 1998:3). Andy Greene related that: A sick man came to the entrance, that portal, and it closed him in. When the man came out he was cured and he emerged far away from his original entrance. Sometimes the exit outlet was identified as Little Lake (in the southern Owens Valley in Rose Valley) or even Red Rock Canyon (in the southwestern portion of the El Paso Mountains in Red Rock Canyon State Park). That yellow bird (Yahwe’era) warned the man to not talk about his experience but because people kept asking him he did. When he talked about it he died. [Garfinkel et al. 2009; Krupp 1998:3].

Physical Description of Yahwe’era Kahniina’ Rock Art Site A 13 m tall limestone rock dome is known by the Kawaiisu as Yahwe’era Kahniina’ (Yahwe’era’s House). This place is also known as tsugwa-mituwa-dї. Tsugwa-vї is a Kawaiisu term meaning limestone. Yahwe’era’s home is located in Back Canyon in eastern California. The Back Canyon area contains significant reserves of high-grade, coarsely crystalline, white and blue-gray limestone. This small Back Canyon island of

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limestone is an unusual lithological feature located near Caliente near the small rural community of Loraine in the Tehachapi Mountains. Back Canyon itself has been given the Kawaiisu placename, pavisiki-pi, a term connected with the Kawaiisu word for “lake” or “pond” (pavinu-nu-pi). This may refer to springs in the Back Canyon area, as there are no formal ponds or lakes in this location. The Back Canyon limestone monolith is known to the Kawaiisu as one of the entrance portals to the Animal Underworld. A spring is located at the “entrance” to Yahwe’era’s Cave (Zigmond 1977:75). A number of Native stories consistently identify this Back Canyon location as a place associated with the tales of Yahwe’era—the Master/Mistress of the Game Animals (Barras 1984; Garfinkel et al. 2009; Garfinkel and Waller 2012; Garfinkel and Williams 2011:67–68, 80–81, 116; Turner 2011:18; Whitley 2000:78–79; Zigmond 1977, 1980). Significantly, a prominent rock painting adorns the limestone dome (Fig. 11.1).

The Yahwe’era Kahniina’ Painting A Back Canyon rock painting site was first mentioned by C. E. Smith in 1948 and was known both as the Caliente Creek site and the Caliente Cave site (Knight 1997). In a synthesis and index of California rock art localities, Sonin (1995) listed a total of seven bibliographical citations for this site. Jack Cawley (n.d., 1963) was the first researcher to thoroughly describe and more fully document the Back Canyon rock art site (Knight 1997:111–115), which was formally recorded in 1989 (Foster et al. 1989). Daniel G. Foster (California State Department of Parks and Recreation) and Jack Ringer (Kern County Fire Department) were granted access to many rock art sites on private land. Their studies (Foster et al. 1989) provided an updated site recording and a formal designation for the site of CA-KER-2412. Finally, Albert Knight, working with Harold Williams, placed Yahwe’era’s home on the register of Sacred Sites developed by the California Native American Heritage Commission (Knight and Williams 2006). Yahwe’era is a prominent supernatural being featured in the oral traditions of the Kawaiisu (Garfinkel et al. 2009; Garfinkel and Waller 2012; Garfinkel and Williams 2011). The single pictograph panel at the Back Canyon site (CA-KER-2412) includes a central 1.1 m tall, animal-human figure facing forward (Whitley 2000:78). This large red animal-human is rendered along with at least six other associated pictograph elements. These include two smaller anthropomorphs, a concentric circle, a spiral motif, a series of eight rows of slashes, each row having an estimated 27 “tick” marks or slashes and two large, vertical, snake-like figures— one to the left and the other to the right of the central element. The largest, central figural depiction on the panel most likely represents Yahwe’era since the form fits Native descriptions and the site is known in Kawaiisu ethnogeography as Yahwe’era’s House.

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Fig. 11.1 Yahwera Kahnina (The Animal Master’s Home) pictograph. Postprocessed digital photograph of the panel employing the DStretch utility (Harman 2020). Photograph by the late Tom Hnatiw. Central figure is the Animal Master. Two snakes are identified. The one on the right is mostly covered with an alkaline stain from water flowing over the limestone rock canvas. The largest figure is 3 feet (0.9 meters) tall

This central animal–human exhibits a concentric circle head, dual protruding head adornments (horns or feathers), and a possibly patterned body with clawed or taloned hands and feet (Whitley 2000:78). The appendages on this main figure are prominent and clearly displayed, although they are faded and somewhat incomplete. The entire image has what some rock art scholars have called a distinctively “immobile” appearance or “static display.” This is especially evident in the oversized hands and feet with their “drooping” attitudes. These features make the figure appear to float and peer out from the other side of the rock surface and provide it with a numinous nature. Recent research suggests that such “iconic” symbols of static anthropomorphs is a stylistic convention for the visual display of supernaturals whose aid is being sought (cf. Kitchell 2010). It is further argued that these stylistic devices provide a visual vocabulary for “supramundane beings” based on and deriving meaning from oral narratives (Kitchell 2010:822). Associated with the large main figure are two long meandering designs. These motifs apparently are representations of the giant rattlesnake and the large gopher snake (kogo) guardians. The rattlesnake is described in Kawaiisu narratives as “stretched across the tunnel entrance” in several of the Yahwe’era narratives. Since “this snake was the ‘door’ to Yahwe’era’s house” (Zigmond 1977), the symbol would stand for the portal. This view is supported by a description of a Yokuts

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(Central Valley Native Californians) visionary experience recorded by Alfred Kroeber (1925:514) in which to gain entry into the supernatural world, an initiate had to pass through two doors, “one formed of a snake” (also see Whitley 2000:79). The notes from J. J. Cawley’s visit to the site in October 1963 state that both a stone pipe and a portable stone mortar were discovered in association with the pictograph panel. No further data are provided about these artifacts as to their size, form, or material type, and it is unclear whether these items were collected or remain somewhere in the vicinity of the painting.

More on the Painted Panel The painted panel is oriented to the southeast and measures roughly 9 by 12 m in overall size. There appear to be at least two different episodes of painting, one expression is superimposed over the other. The early records by Cawley and also by the California Department of Forestry (Foster et al. 1989) identify both black and red elements. Various observers also identified a large number and series of slash marks, but the site recorders disagree as to the exact count. All agree that there are either eight or nine rows of some 24 to 27 marks per row. These slash marks are perhaps best described as a series of short, consecutive, vertical lines. The site is near a natural spring, and rainwater or perhaps natural seepage has caused damage to the images. Deposits from limestone in solution are prominent on the panel. The site was originally described as having several colors (as above), but recent review of the panel only identified elements remaining in red. Maurice Zigmond retells “A Visit to the Underworld” (Zigmond 1980:75–177; Whitley 2000:78–79) about an event that took place at the Back Canyon location, and there are a number of versions of the Yahwe’era tale that take place there. Entrances to Yahwe’era’s underworld home can also be found in a cave (possibly known as Bat Cave) above Horse Canyon and at ti-gahni, also known as Rock House or Creation Cave, in Sand Canyon in Tomo-Kahni (Winter House) State Historic Park (Garfinkel and Williams 2011:29, 63–64, 112, 116, 129–131). Curiously, it seems that Maurice Zigmond, principal ethnographer to the Kawaiisu, may have not personally visited the Back Canyon rock art site, the entrance of Yahwe’era’s underworld home, as he never specifically describes the rock painting in any of his discussions of the Yahwe’era stories. Alternatively, perhaps he was keeping such information secret to protect the site and also to shelter the sensitive spiritual and sacred attributes of this religiously important place. I was originally taken to Yahwe’era’s home as a young man 40 years ago in 1979. I visited it once again with the Native American political leader and co-author of the Kawaiisu Handbook, Harold Williams, in 2010.

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Etymology of the Name, Yahwe’era The Kawaiisu term Yahwe’era (yaahwe?era) is derived from the root word yaa, meaning to carry (Zigmond et al. 1990). The name is also related to the Kawaiisu word yagi that means to cry or sing like a bird or crow (like a rooster), and the similar Kawaiisu term? arare also means to cry. Further, the root of the word and its stem derives from words relating to death and dying. The word “to die” in Kawaiisu is yuwe?e-kwee-. From these related terms, it is reasonably argued that there are several concepts intermingled in the name, Yahwe’era. These terms and concepts relate to an animal, specifically a bird that cries, sings, and crows, may be carrying something, and is associated with death and dying.

Analysis of the Yahwe’era Narratives An analysis of the nine Yahwe’era narratives reveals certain recurrent themes. The elements most frequently mentioned are the Yahwe’era deity, songs, quail, bears, a big snake, Kawaiisu humans, deer, and hunting equipment. Repetition of these narrative elements supports the importance of these key themes. Of interest is the narrative supporting that the Animal Master immortal takes the form of a bird and was described as a hawk. Yahwe’era also has a special relationship with mountain quail, and in three narratives (two Kawaiisu and one Tubatulabal) he fathers a profusion of quail progeny by his human spouse. Yahwe’era lives in a cave, hole, or tunnel deep within the earth, where the spirits of deceased game animals dwell. He is guarded by two snakes. He is able to help humans who visit when they are sick or need assistance in life and can transmit healing powers through gifts of song. Yahwe’era is associated with hunting arrows that remain after the game animals (bighorn, deer, fox etc.) leave to be reborn. His human visitors obtain good luck in hunting by taking the hunting weapons littered about the walls of the cave. Yahwe’era is a provider of an inexhaustible food supply, either pinyon nuts, acorns, or deer meat, magically replenished from a never-empty food vessel. Yahwe’era stories represent journeys of troubled individuals using various substances or techniques to enter into the rocks where Yahwe’era lives and ultimately to exit at another portal that may be distant from the doorway that the visitor initially entered.

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Yahwe’era and Quail The Chemehuevi had a class of ritual specialists known as bighorn sheep dreamers (Kelly 1936: 138–142; Laird 1980). These sheep dreamers were especially adept at charming game animals. Hence, these were shamans of the hunt (cf. Hedges 2001:131).3 Kelly (1936:142) describes these sheep dreamer/game charmer/hunt shamans as having visions of rain, bullroarers, and quail-tufted caps of mountain sheep hide. These caps were the most prestigious headpiece of the Chemehuevi. This mountain hat (kaitcoxo) was a critical component of the costume for a hunter or chief (Kelly and Fowler 1986:373, Fig. 2, bottom left; Laird 1976:6–7). The hat was traditionally sewn with a prominent tuft of many feathers—exclusively the crests of quail. Quail-feathers were only used for the adornment on special baskets (taarabigadi) used by the Kawaiisu for the preparation of a jimsonweed brew used by visionseekers to enter the world of the supernatural (Zigmond 1978). Hence, ethnographic references for both the Chemehuevi and Kawaiisu point to significant association of quail plumes for their vision seekers. These feathers also appear to be prominent metaphors, symbols relating to prestige, the control of game animals, and hunting success. In the Animal Master accounts and the descriptions of Yahwe’era, we are often told that this being is a raptor or scavenger (small hawk, raven, crow etc.). This class of animals is often symbolic of the skill in hunting and are also associated with death as scavengers or carrion eaters. Both characteristics are likely metaphors associated with the Animal Master. Some Kawaiisu accounts portray the Animal Master as an androgynous being, recognized in human dreams in either male or female form. Women dream of the supernatural as a man and men see him in their dreams as a woman. The Kawaiisu themselves provide another rare example of a documented rock art site ethnographically linked to myth (cf. Sutton 1981, 1982). Creation Cave (also known as Rock House, ti-gahni, CA-KER-508 or Inspiration Cave; see Knight 1994) is located in Sand Canyon in the Tehachapi Mountains within Tomo Kahni State Historic Park. The polychrome paintings there are rendered in mostly red, black, and white and depict a number of anthropomorphs as well as zoomorphic creatures (bears, bighorn sheep, and snakes). The cave is mentioned in two separate Kawaiisu myths. This rock art site is described as the location where the animal people conducted celebrations, and it was here that the world was created; a mortar hole marks the spot. Grizzly Bear called the animals together and the various animals then decided what they wanted to be and each painted his own picture (Zigmond 1977:76, 1980:41). The Tomo Kahni creation cave is also mentioned as an exit portal where the Animal Master allowed visitors to leave his/her home.

3

Among the Achuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon, shamans are likewise believed to exert control over wildlife (see Chacon 2007, 2012 and Chacon Chap. 12 of this volume).

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Summary and Conclusions Kawaiisu ethnographic data strongly suggests that the paintings at Yahwe’era’s home represent mythic supernaturals, particularly the Master of the Animals and serve as a visual shorthand to communicate the essence of the Kawaiisu sacred narratives. This interpretation does not exclude the images having other meanings or that the representations were simultaneously intended as depictions of shamans commemorating their experiences in altered states of consciousness. Various levels of meaning may have merged within the symbolism simultaneously signifying both the source and agent of supernatural power and the dream and trance world that gave humans access to the Game Animal Master. Therefore, it appears likely that the artisans of the Yahwe’era painting were engaged in rituals that served to activate the mythological past, evoking and retrieving a supernatural agent capable of restoring and revivifying game animals and replenishing the world. It also seems reasonable that local mythologies would have profoundly influenced the character and interpretation of the personal visions or dreams experienced. Significantly, some researchers acknowledge that local mythology could be of great importance in contributing to our understanding of the meanings of rock art production (Bahn and Helvenston 2005:106; Boyd 2016; Hyder 2018). The Yahwe’era Kahniina’ site and related Kawaiisu sacred narratives stand out as a significant example of ethnographic testimony linking rock art to the animal master’s habits, habitat, and visage. It is indeed fortunate that we have such a robust corpus of mythological detail and that this information informs us as to the function and character of the rock art imagery arrayed on the limestone dome of Back Canyon.

References Bahn, P.G., and P.A. Helvenston. 2005. Waking the trance fixed. Louisville, KY: Wasteland Press. Barras, J. 1984. Their places shall know them no more. Tehachapi, CA: Judy and Bud Barras, Private Printing. Bibby, B. 1999. Conversations with Kawaiisu (Nuooah) elder Andy Greene. Audio recordings on file. Tehachapi, CA: Tehachapi Heritage League. Boyd, C.E. 2016. The white shaman mural: An enduring creation narrative in the rock art of the lower Pecos. Austin: University of Texas Press. Campbell, J. 1988. Historical atlas of world mythology. New York: Harper & Row. Cawley, J.J. 1963. Observations made on August 31, 1967 at the Phillips Site. Caliente, CA: On file with Harold Williams. ———. n.d. Notes on pictographs and petroglyphs, mostly in Kern County. Archaeological research facility manuscript number 386. University of California, Berkeley. On file Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. Chacon, R. 2007. Seeking the Headhunter’s power: The quest for Arutam among the Achuar Indians of the Ecuadorian Amazon and the development of ranked societies. In The taking and displaying of human body parts as trophies by Amerindians, ed. R. Chacon and D. Dye, 523–546. New York: Springer.

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———. 2012. Conservation or resource maximization? Analyzing subsistence hunting among the Achuar (Shiwiar) of Ecuador. In The ethics of anthropology and Amerindian research: Reporting on environmental degradation and warfare, ed. R. Chacon and R. Mendoza, 311–360. New York: Springer. Foster, D.G., J. Ringer, and B.J. Ciccio. 1989. Middens and pictographs: Seven new archaeological discoveries from the Caliente area, Kern County, California. Sacramento, CA: On file Archaeology Office, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Franklin, R.F., and P. Bunte. 1996. Animals and humans, sex and death: Toward a symbolic analysis of four southern Numic rituals. Journal of California and Great Basin anthropology 18 (2): 178–203. Garfinkel, A.P. 2006. Paradigm shifts, rock art studies and the “Coso sheep cult” of eastern California. North American Archaeologist 27 (3): 203–244. Garfinkel, A.P., and S.J. Waller. 2012. Sounds and symbolism from the netherworld: Acoustic archaeology at the animal master’s portal. Pacific Coast Archaeological Society Quarterly 46 (4): 37–60. Garfinkel, A.P., and H. Williams. 2011. The handbook of the Kawaiisu: A sourcebook and guide to the primary resources on the native peoples of the far southern Sierra Nevada, Tehachapi Mountains and southwestern Great Basin. Bakersfield, CA: Wahi-San’avi Publications. Garfinkel, A.P., D.R. Austin, D. Earle, and H. Williams. 2009. Myth, ritual and rock art: Coso decorated animal-humans and the animal master. Rock Art Research 26 (2). Harman, J. 2020. DStretch: Rock art digital enhancement. Electronic document. Accessed August 23, 2020, from http://www.dstretch.com/ Harrington, J.P. 1986. Ethnographic field notes, Volume 3, Southern California/Basin. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, National Anthropological Archives. Harris, Jack S. 1940. The white knife Shoshoni of Nevada. In Acculturation in seven American Indian tribes, ed. Ralph Linton, 39–116. New York: Appleton-Century. Harrod, H.I. 2000. The animals came dancing: Native American sacred ecology and animal kinship. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Hays-Gilpin, K. 2000. Beyond mother earth and father sky: Sex and gender in ancient southwestern visual arts. In Reading the body: Representations and remains in the archaeological record, ed. Alison E. Rautman, 165–186. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hedges, K. 2001. Traversing the great gray middle ground. An examination of shamanistic rock art interpretation. American Indian Rock Art 27: 123–136. Hultkrantz, A. 1961. The masters of the animals among the Wind River Shoshoni. Ethnos 26 (4): 198–218. ———. 1981. Belief and worship in native America. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. ———. 1986. Mythology and religious concepts. In Handbook of north American Indians, ed. Great Basin and Warren L. d’Azevedo, vol. 11, 630–640. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. ———. 1987a. Native religions of North America. San Francisco: Harper and Rowe. ———. 1987b. Diversity in cosmology: The case of the Wind River Shoshoni. The Canadian Journal of Native Studies 7 (2): 279–295. Hyder, W. 2018. Arrowhead Spring: Where the Earth weeps “tears of the sun”. Bakersfield, CA: California Rock Art Foundation Research Monograph No. 1. Kelly, I.T. 1936. Chemehuevi Shamanism. In Essays in anthropology presented to A. L. Kroeber in Celebration of his sixtieth birthday, ed. Robert H. Lowie, 129–142. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kelly, I.T., and C.S. Fowler. 1986. Southern Paiute. In Handbook of north American Indians, Volume 11, Great Basin, ed. W.L. d’Azevedo, 525–557. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. Kitchell, J.A. 2010. Basketmaker and archaic rock art of the Colorado plateau: A reinterpretation of paleoimagery. American Antiquity 75 (4): 819–840.

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Knight, A. 1994. Tomo-Kahni and it’s place in the history of California’s native Americans. TomoKahni Newsletter. Caliente, CA: On file Harold Williams. ———. 1997. Notes on the rock art of south-Central California, 1962-1969. The John W. Cawley papers at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, organized and annotated by Albert Knight. On file Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, Santa Barbara, CA. Knight, A., and H. Williams. 2006. Sacred site nomination for Yahwe’era Kahniina’. Sacramento, CA: Submitted to and on file Native American Heritage Commission. Kroeber, A.L. 1925. Handbook of the Indians of California, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 78. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Krupp, E.C. 1998. Tomo Kahni State Historic Park (cave of creation) KER-508: Field notes for Saturday August 8, 1998. Sacramento, CA: On file Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles. Also on file California State Department of Parks and Recreation. Laird, C. 1976. The Chemehuevis. Banning: Malki Museum Press. ———. 1980. Chemehuevi shamanism, sorcery, and charms. Journal of California and Great Basin anthropology 2 (1): 80–87. Lee, R.B., and R. Daly. 1999. The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Liljeblad, S. 1986. Oral tradition: Content and style of verbal arts. In Handbook of north American Indians, Volume 11, Great Basin, ed. W.L. d’Azevedo, 641–659. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. Lowie, R.H. 1924. Notes on Shoshonean ethnography. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 20 (3): 185–314. Malouf, C. 1966. Ethnohistory in the Great Basin. In The current status of anthropological research in the Great Basin: 1964, ed. W.L. d’Azevedo, W.A. Davis, D.D. Fowler, and W. Suttles, 1–38. Reno, NV: Desert Research Institute Social Science and Humanities Publications 1. McNeil, L.D. 2002. Climbing bear, Spirit-helper: Companion petroglyphs at Shalabolino (Siberia) and Shavano Valley (Colorado, USA). American Indian Rock Art 27: 301–312. ———. 2005. Seasonal revival rites and rock art of Minusinsk Basin Colonisers (southern Siberia). Rock Art Research 22: 3–16. ———. 2008. Recurrence of bear restoration symbolism: Minusinsk Basin Evenki and Basinplateau Ute. Journal of Cognition and Culture 8: 71–98. Miller, J. 1983. Basin religion and theology: A comparative study of power (Puha). Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 5 (1&2): 66–86. Reichel-Dolmatoff, G. 1971. Amazonian cosmos: The sexual and religious symbolism of the Tukano Indians. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Slotten, R.L. 1965. The master of animals: A study in the symbolism of ultimacy in primitive religion. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 23: 293–302. Sonin, B. 1995. California rock art – An annotated site inventory and bibliography. Los Angeles: Rock Art Archives of the Institute of Archaeology, University of California and Bay Area Rock Art Research Association. Steward, J.H. 1936. Myths of the Owens Valley Paiute. University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 34 (5): 355–440. ———. 1938. Basin-plateau sociopolitical groups. Washington, DC: Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 120. ———. 1941. Cultural element distributions: XIII, Nevada Shoshone. University of California Anthropological Records 4 (2): 209–360. Sutton, M.Q. 1981. Bighorn sheep rock art from the southern Sierra Nevada. Masterkey 55: 13–17. ———. 1982. Kawaiisu mythology and rock art: One example. Journal of California and Great Basin anthropology 4: 148–154. Thompson, S. 1929. Tales of the north American Indians. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Turner, J. 2011. Language. In Handbook of the Kawaiisu: A sourcebook and guide to the primary resources on the native peoples of the far southern Sierra Nevada, Tehachapi Mountains and

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southwestern Great Basin, ed. A.P. Garfinkel and H. Williams, 15–22. Bakersfield, CA: WahiSan’avi Publications. Underwood, J. 2006. Discovering the desert Kawaiisu. In A festschrift honoring the contributions of California archaeologist Jay von Werlhof, Maturango Museum Publication Number 20, R. L. Kaldenberg ed., 179–192. Ridgecrest, CA: Maturango Press. Voegelin, C.F. 1935. Tubatulabal texts. University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 34: 191–246. Voegelin, E. 1938. Tubatulabal ethnography. University of California Anthropological Records 2 (1): 1–84. Whitley, D.S. 2000. The art of the shaman: Rock art of California. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. ———. 1977. The supernatural world of the Kawaiisu. In Flowers of the wind: Papers on ritual, myth, and symbolism in California and the southwest, ed. Thomas C. Blackburn, 59–95. Socorro, NM: Ballena Press. ———. 1978. Kawaiisu Basketry. Journal of California Anthropology 5 (2): 199–215. ———. 1980. Kawaiisu mythology: An oral tradition of south-Central California. Socorro, NM: Ballena Press Anthropological Papers No. 18. Zigmond, M.L., C. Booth, and P. Munro. 1990. Kawaiisu: A grammar and dictionary with texts. Berkeley, CA: University of California Publications in Linguistics.

Dr. Alan Garfinkel is an archaeologist at MGE, Inc. and the Founder and President of the California Rock Art Foundation. He has conducted archaeological excavations and surveys throughout the Great Basin, California, and the American Southwest. His research interests include Native American rock art, cosmology, ritual, hunting magic, migration, revitalization movements, and linguistics.

Chapter 12

Supernatural Gamekeepers of Eastern North America: Animal Masters, Guardian Animals, and Masters of Animals David H. Dye

Abstract Three forms or modes of supernatural animal-human relationships may be identified in eastern North America: animal masters, guardian animals, and masters of animals. I focus on beliefs in these animal-human relations in terms of supernatural gamekeepers and their associated charter myths, regalia, and ritual sodalities. Animal masters control the availability and behavior of their animal “subjects.” They are materialized as animal effigy vessels, which are employed as venerated figurines. Guardian animals, as the object of human supplications for power, bestow health and protection, and are often visualized as artistic motifs and ritual regalia. As protagonists, masters of animals free captive animals for the benefit and welfare of humankind. As antagonists, masters of animals hoard animals, and are often depicted as “other than human persons” in a variety of artistic media, but most commonly as ceramic effigies. These otherworldly agents typically grant health, power, and success to those who establish proper procedures and protocols by performing specific rituals and by adhering to various prescribed practices of supplication and veneration. I outline their material correlates, their representation as cosmic and earthly other-than-human beings, and the social logic of reanimation, reincarnation, and requickening of both animals and humans, which served to counter practices of conservation and sustainability among eastern North American indigenous people. Ritual relations with supernatural gamekeepers, either as animal masters, guardian animals, or masters of animals, did not prevent the overharvesting of targeted game animals. Keywords Supernatural gamekeepers · Eastern North America · Animal masters · Guardian animals · Masters of animals

D. H. Dye (✉) University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. J. Chacon (ed.), The History and Environmental Impacts of Hunting Deities, Conflict, Environment, and Social Complexity 4, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37503-3_12

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The ancients, however, experienced human life as part of a widely spreading network of connections which reached beyond the local and the national communities into the hidden depths of nature and the powers that rule nature.—Henri Frankfort (1948: 3)

The notion that Indigenous eastern North Americans in the early postcontact period embraced animal game conservation and sustainability, living in harmony with nature, is a cherished and widely propagated myth (Ellingson 2001; Hames 2007; Harkin 2007; Krech 1981; Redford 1991). And this stereotype of the “ecologically noble savage” is still prevalent and resonate (Buege 1996). Over the past halfcentury alternative views of the extent to which Native Americans were “Ecological Indians” have generated a long-standing debate concerning conservation, ecological harmony, extinction, sustainability, and waste (Kay 1994; Martin 1978; Peacock 1998). Calvin Martin (1978), for example, attributed Native American willingness to overharvest wildlife to the sixteenth and seventeenth century epidemics that shattered the ritual bonds between humans and game animals. In response, Charles Hudson (1981) points out the contradiction between the perception of a special spiritual relationship between animals and Indigenous people that fosters conservation on the one hand, and the business of hunting and killing animals almost to extinction for their hides and meat on the other. According to Hudson, even though Indigenous people may have conceived of themselves as existing in a special—even respectful—relationship with animals, the brute forces of economics and politics may have given them no option but to kill game animals in order to survive. Finally, Shepard Krech (1999), also in reaction to Martin, notes that conservation is an anachronistic and inappropriate concept when applied to early colonial Indigenous game hunting.1 Notions of human harmonious relations with game animals and supernatural gamekeepers are central to understanding an Indigenous perspective on game harvesting. While Westerners consider living in “harmony with nature” to denote conservation and sustainability, eastern North Americans perceive ecological harmony as treating game animals with honor and respect, and properly supplicating guardian animals and supernatural gamekeepers. Focusing on cosmology, ecology, and ritual through the lens of Indigenous ontologies provides a crucial interpretive perspective of animals, humans, and other-than-human beings and their entanglements and interactions with animated ritual objects, enmeshed social institutions, and sacred landscapes (Alberti 2016; Alberti and Marshall 2009; Baltus and Baires 2017; Cipolla 2019; Hallowell 1960; Strong 2017). In addition, discussions of beliefs concerning renewal that underwrite a social logic of sacred ecologies impart important insights into Indigenous ontologies (Berkes 1993, 2012; Harrod 1987, 2000). Archaeologists are increasingly turning their attention to religion and ritual as a means of exploring the many dimensions and facets of social complexity (Alt 2018a, b; Alt and Pauketat 2018; Barber and Joyce

1

See Richard Chacon, Chap. 14 in this volume, on Neotropical supernatural gamekeepers, which dovetails with this chapter on eastern North American supernatural gamekeepers.

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2018; Carmody and Barrier 2020; Chandler et al. 2017; Fowles 2013; Koldehoff and Pauketat 2018; Pauketat 2013; Rowan 2012). Considering the world as consisting of interconnected agents, beings, and social actors brings to the forefront the multiple ways cosmology, ritual practice, sacred objects, and social institutions articulate with and shape past and ongoing ecological practices that allow the overexploitation of game animals. In this chapter, I address the interconnected web of Indigenous animal–human relations in eastern North America and consider the role of reincarnation, renewal, and requickening as having formed a deeply embedded and widespread ritual logic that promoted game animal over-harvesting in the early contact period. Understanding the environmental impacts and interconnections of belief systems, hunting practices, and ritual institutions is crucial for assessing the degree to which animals were excessively hunted for exchange items, feasting events, hide products, and ritual paraphernalia (Harrod 2000; Lapham 2005). Anthropological considerations of long-term animal–human interconnections inform and shape our perceptions of preservation efforts on a global scale as humanity copes with the growing crisis of animal protection, sustainability, and viability (Geist 2018; Organ et al. 2012). Three key animal–human relationships with other-than-human beings in eastern North America may be outlined: animal masters, guardian animals, and masters of animals. Each mode is grounded in archaeological evidence, ethnographic accounts, ethnohistoric documents, iconographic analysis, material representations, and mythic (charter) narratives. Their institutional contexts and materialization offer an appreciation of varying perceptions concerning supernatural gamekeepers and animal guardians as possessing special powers, which may be supplicated by hunters for health, prosperity, and well-being. Animals as both cosmological beings and economic game resources are often agentive other-than-human beings entangled with humans, in addition to their roles as animistic ritual regalia and theatrical paraphernalia.

Renewing Animals and Humans Religious experiences and ritual practices, as part of everyday life, are embedded in Indigenous hunting and trapping, as animals, humans, and other-than-human beings are entangled in interconnected webs of cosmic, ritual, and social relationships. That animals and humans possess consciousness, will, and souls (Harrod 2000; Hultkrantz 1953: 483–497; Mills 1981), provides a crucial basis for appreciating deeply entrenched beliefs concerning rebirth, reincarnation, renewal, requickening, and resuscitation, all of which are predicated as cyclical, ongoing, and renewable (Hall 1997; Harrod 1987; Mills and Slobodin 1994). For eastern North Americans, requickening is deeply embedded traditional belief (Hall 1997; Jefferson 2008; Mills and Slobodin 1994; Radin 1926, 1945; Von Gernet 1994), undergirding the rationale for game animal renewal, as the fundamental tenets of reincarnation beliefs rest on the proposition that upon the death of an

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ancestor, animal, or kinsmen, animals and humans will be reborn into the world of the living or regenerated. However, in Indigenous ontologies, animals and humans have separate reincarnation cycles (Mills 1988a: 388), with each locked into respective rounds of “rebirth” – animals reborn into the animal world, humans reborn into the human world (Obeyesekere 1994: xiv–xv). Beliefs in reincarnation are reported for the majority of the North American language families (Mills 1994a: 19, Mills et al. 2011). For example, Antonia Mills (1981, 1988b) found in her sample of ten North American culture areas that all evidence beliefs in animal reincarnation with each species having its own reincarnation cosmologies and cycles (Mills 1988b: 24). Reincarnation beliefs comprise one of the basic “tenets of a widespread American Indian philosophy” (Mills 1988b: 23), with its origins in hunter-gather animism and shamanism (Mills 1994a: 19). The association of reincarnation with shamanism is underscored by Mills’ observation that, “there is no doubt that shamanism and reincarnation concepts are closely connected” (Mills 1994b: 8), with reincarnation cosmology fitting into basic shamanic beliefs (Mills 1982, 1988b, 1994a), connecting and entangling ancestors, humans, and the “spirit of the land” (Mills 2001: 320). After death, animals and humans travel to a land of the dead, which is more or less a replica of the society in which they had previously lived. The abode or “lodge” of animal spirits may reside above ground, underground, in the watery realm, or in some indeterminate locale as a fixed pool of spirits existing in an endless cycle of ongoing continuity and renewal (Obeyesekere 1994: xvi). Thus, the deeply held idea of inexhaustible reservoirs of animal spiritual forces that could be ritually renewed or requickened counter conceptions of conservation and sustainability practices. One mechanism for ritual renewal that reinforced the existence and viability of reincarnation and requickening took place in the context of ritual sodalities.2 In sodality institutions membership is often exclusive, being restricted to an aristocratic cohort of ritual practitioners who conduct dramatic performances that demonstrate and exemplify the dead’s eventual renewal and resuscitation. Rebirth cosmologies are associated worldwide with ancestor “cults” (i.e., religious sodalities) (Obeyesekere 1994: xiv); in eastern North America reincarnation and renewal rituals provide connections and continuities with one’s ancestors who reside in the realm of the dead (Von Gernet 1994: 48). Winnebago (Ho-Chunk) shamans participate in ritual sodalities based on specific “medicine animals” supplicated during dances, prayers, and songs (Radin 1923: 433–434). Iroquois medicine people perform rituals considered necessary for maintaining the continued good will and rapport of medicine animals (Fenton 1968: 122). Animal medicine lodges rely on reincarnation beliefs, among other practices, to restrict power within elite families. Following this social logic, the Huron transferred the names of prominent deceased chiefs to ensure maximum political and social efficacy. This requickening or resuscitation of chiefs has affinities to the Iroquois Mourning or Condolence Council, a ritual in which

2

Ritual sodalities are also known as cultic institutions, medicine lodges, and secret societies.

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“requickening” restored the instability caused by death, instilling in a new chief the name of the deceased. In this respect, reincarnation beliefs and rituals safeguard the inheritance of offices, prerogatives, qualities, and titles tied to leadership (Von Gernet 1994: 50, note 11). The entangled world of animals, humans, and other-than-human beings, including animal masters, guardian animals, and master animals, is also illustrated by the Great Lakes Algonquians’ Feast of the Dead, in which the deceased are symbolically reincarnated by transferring the names of the dead to the living, much as the Iroquois League’s founding chiefs are symbolically reincarnated by conveying their names to their successors during Condolence Councils (Hall 1997: 40). Thus, the names and souls of the dead are continually passed from generation to generation to renew the dead in the person of new chiefs (Hall 1997: 35) through rituals such as the Feast of the Dead and the Condolence Councils, providing trenchant models for animal renewal and requickening. Feasting events, such as the Feast of the Dead, also require large numbers of game animals. For example, Radin (1923: 502) notes, when the “custodian of the war bundle decides to give a feast he and his nephews go out and kill as many deer as they can, for the larger number of deer obtained the larger will be the number of spirits to whom they can make offerings.” In the middle of winter the “Winnebago used to go out hunting, and they gave a feast to all the spirits who had blessed them.” Such cosmic obligations require the discharge of debts to other-than-human beings in exchange for harmony and productivity on the secular plane through public feasting and performance, in which “ontological borders between things, between entities, and between things and entities may dissolve in the act of the feast” (Cobb and Stephenson 2017: 144). Thus, the concept of harmony is one of maintaining appropriate relations with other-than human beings, such as supernatural gamekeepers, as well as conducting proper rituals. Harmonious relations with nature, from an indigenous perspective does not necessitate a conservation ethic to ensure the sustainability of game animals. Feasts provide examples of how ontologically different objects relate to world renewal and otherworldly beings, which are enmeshed in projects of animal consumption and sacra circulation. The need for continued repayment of cosmic debts associated with world renewal ceremonies thus accelerates demands for game. The complex interplay of participants in feasting events is essential for mediating ritual relations with the otherworld in order to release one’s obligations to other-thanhuman beings (Cobb and Stephenson 2017: 161). The social logic of the cosmic feast and ritual requickening practices prevail among polities embracing the idea that animals could be replenished given proper ritual protocols, and that animals and their transcendental keepers-masters-owners should be treated with honor and respect (Krech 1999). In other words, animals could not be killed if hunters broke or ignored ritual proscriptions and taboos. In this sense, game animals could be renewed and replenished in the same ways humans could be ritually reincarnated and requickened.

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Animal Masters, Guardian Animals, and Masters of Animals Each animal–human mode – animal masters, guardian animals, and masters of animals – has differing and distinctive simulacrums and ritual practices; however, each mode is also sedimented in beliefs that embrace the recycling and renewal of life forces, including reanimation, reincarnation, and requickening. These beliefs, predicated on the ongoing and perpetual cycle of life and death for animals and humans alike, recall an earlier dawn time when the separation between animals and humans was not so clearly drawn. Throughout the Americas “animals and plants are supposed to be controlled by masters who rule over them and own them. These masters may be animals of some sort, or supernatural beings” (Hultkrantz 1997: 1891). Thus, supernatural animal guardians, masters, owners, and spirits, not only possess souls and spirits but also have the dual function of helping hunters and protecting game animals (Paulson and Auer 1964: 211).

Animal Masters In the first mode of animal–human entanglements, animal masters assume the role of supernatural representatives of their subjects, controlling, directing, and guarding the availability and behavior of game animals (Campbell 1988a, b; Garfinkel 2006; Garfinkel et al. 2009; Garfinkel and Waller 2012; Hultkrantz 1953: 497, 1961a, 1987; Miller 1983: 69). Animal master narratives, one of the most distinctive American mythic narratives (Alexander 1916: 292–293), are recounted throughout eastern North America (Hultkrantz 1961a: 57). These mythic charters provide the legitimation for animal medicine lodges, the protocols for supplicating access to game, and the rationale for beliefs in animal owners. The animal master is a supernatural animal “ruler” who exercises stewardship over animals, especially important and valued game animals hunted and valued by humans (Hultkrantz 1961a: 54). As “chiefs,” animal masters occupy positions that mirror social structures similar to those of the human world. Animal masters as other-than-human beings make game available for hunters, protect their charges, and see that these “subjects” receive appropriate handling, respect, and treatment when killed. Masters of game hold a crucial role for hunters by either preventing or sanctioning hunters in terms of the availability of game animals (Hultkrantz 1961a: 54–55). Animal masters act as “intermediaries between the powers below and those above,” replenishing the earth with game and serving as helpers to the hunter (Alexander 1916: xvii). The animal master is “not offended by the slaughter of his wards provided the tabus are properly observed” (Alexander 1916: 292), and is the agent responsible for the regeneration or renewal of game animals, by facilitating their “reintroduction into the human world from their underground homes” (Garfinkel et al. 2009: 186).

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The nineteenth century Cherokee, for example, believed the ancestors of each animal clan were the celestial prototypes of the animals inhabiting the earth and that they lived in the celestial realm or sky world with the Thunder powers, i.e., Hero Twins (Mooney 1900a: 231, 240, 256). These animal masters or animal prototypes could be addressed and supplicated through offerings of smoke and sacred discourses framed as formulaic incantations (Irwin 1992). Every animal species has its own master, the prototypes of common animals, but being far more considerable in power, size, swiftness, and all other qualities than their earthly counterparts (Mooney 1888, 1900a: 250–252; Mooney 1891: 347, 342; Mooney and Olbrechts 1932: 25–38, 44–50). The animal master or owner is the guardian of an animal collective in the same way the “Supreme Being” is the spiritual force that rules over animals, human beings, and the universe (Hultkrantz 1961a: 59). As individual animals may act as the “boss” of a herd, so too in the spirit world does the animal elder or master serve as a leader, with each species having its own “supernatural chief” (Hultkrantz 1961a: 60). Economically valuable animals are more generally conceived as having masters. For example, in eastern North America, the bear, beaver, bison, and white-tailed deer each have their own chief (Hultkrantz 1953: 487–498, note 2, 503–505). These animal masters are sometimes arranged in hierarchies based on their food value, mystical capacity, physical appearance, and ritual importance. In some instances, an animal master may rule over all animals of a given habitat: the bear over the woodlands, the beaver over the watery realm, the bison over the plains and prairies, and the deer over the forests (Hultkrantz 1961a: 61). In the northern hemisphere bears are often referred to as “masters of the forest” (Hallowell 1926), being in charge of and responsible for woodland game animals. As an example of an earthly, transcendent animal master, the beaver is often considered the master of water animals. For the Chawi Pawnee, the beaver is in charge of hibernating watery realm animals (Murie 1981: 11: 201ff). The central underlying premise of the Chawi Pawnee Beaver ceremony is the renewal of life in the spring, when hibernating animals, particularly those living in the waters, are revived through the master beaver’s agency. Based on a fundamental ritual logic of renewal, hibernating animals must have new life put into them by the deities each spring as the earth awakens. When the beaver is ritually requickened, some of the renewed power imparted to dormant watery realm animals is also transferred to the ritual practitioners.

Guardian Animals In the second mode of animal–human relationships, guardian animals comprise a distinctive subset of tutelary spirits, which include not only animals but also objects, other-than-human beings, and things, providing an almost limitless array of potential personal guardians (Benedict 1923; Hultkrantz 1961b; Slotten 1966). According to Paul Radin (1956: 116), in addition to a singular guardian spirit, individuals may

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obtain protection and specific powers from a number and variety of culture heroes, deities, other-than-human beings, and spirits through offerings and propitiations. Åke Hultkrantz (1953: 497–498) notes the distinction between the animal master, as a supernatural leader or representative for a living animal species, and the guardian animal as a spirit animal that is a person’s tutelar. While animal masters rule over their animal subjects, guardian animals provide special knowledge, powers, and skills to humans. The guardian animal endows the suppliant with powers the donor animal possesses to a supernatural degree. Although usually appearing as animals, the guardian may shapeshift into human-like form during dream visions (Hultkrantz 1961b: 201). The guardian animal typically appears to the deserving suppliant through dreams or visions (Irwin 1994). When shamans experience a dream vision, they accept or incorporate the spirit of the animal that appears to them as their guardian spirit (Obeyesekere 1994: xv). During the dream vision, the guardian or tutelary spirit bestows and describes bundle items, ceremonial procedures, dances, mementoes, names, powers, skills, songs, and taboos. Thereafter, the guardian remains a life-long protector, which may be conjured and supplicated through the agency of the medicine bundle and the institution of the ritual sodality. Through legerdemain theatrics involving mortal combat, rival shamans demonstrate their tutelary’s efficacy and power (Benedict 1923: 20). Cherokee guardian spirits, for example, cannot be seen or heard, nor can their presence be felt, yet the Cherokee know what the spirits are like and how they behave (Speck et al. 1951). The guardian spirit may “descend” to a person by adoption, dream vision, inheritance, or purchase. One’s relation to their guardian animal is often expressed through the dances, regalia, and songs of the religious sodality in which one is a member. One’s guardian spirits demand attention and honor, and resent neglect, inattention or ill-treatment often result in adversity, illness, or unsuccessful hunting. Such practices extended well into the past, based on archaeological examples of guardian spirit imagery referencing healing (benevolence) and witchcraft (malevolence) (Dye 2020a: 206). The otter, as an example of a guardian spirit, is regarded as an earthly, transcendent being that confers esoteric knowledge to human supplicants (Harrison 1989). The otter’s association with the watery realm imbued religious society members with miraculous Beneath World powers, which they could demonstrate and manifest through healing and sleight of hand performances (Fletcher and La Flesche 1911: 509–565; Fortune 1932: 58–102). But otters also have cosmic affiliations, which are manifest during rituals such as the Midewiwin when owners of animistic bundles “shoot” objects into society members as part of prestidigitation performances. Upon reanimating or revivifying the “victim,” the Midewiwin society initiate literally and metaphorically returns from the dead as part of spectacular religious sodality theatrics (Hoffman 1891; Lankford 2016; Weeks 2009).

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Masters/Mistresses of Animals The third mode of animal–human relationships, masters and mistresses of animals, is typically culture heroes, deities, other-than-human persons, or tricksters (Harrod 2000: 47–60; Paulson and Auer 1964; Slotten 1965, 1966: 187). In mythic narratives, the master of animals may be an antagonist who hoards or restricts game animals, or a protagonist who frees sequestered animals. The antagonist often holds game for their private use, only releasing them as needed, while the protagonist releases them for the good of humankind; however, they may also unleash pests and scourges. Culture heroes, as masters of animals in charter myths, may be an Earth Mother (mistress of animals), or her husband, a great hunter (master of animals) or their offspring. For example, according to the Wichita, Moon [Earth Mother] instructed women about childbirth, she was the special guardian of women, and she regulated “the reproduction and growth of all humans, animals, birds, and plants” (Dorsey 1904a: 19). Epic narratives relate dawn time events, in which the release of animals is but one of many deeds performed by dramatic culture hero antagonists and protagonists in addition to chartering institutions and offices. The Cherokee consider Little Deer as the “chief of the deer,” head of the deer tribe, and the animal master that takes vengeance by inflicting rheumatism on and denying game to unthinking hunters who violate the rules and taboos of appropriate behavior regarding deer (Mooney 1891: 320, 347, 1900a: 251, 263–264). Nineteenth century Cherokee hunters believed they could not kill too many deer, a notion premised on reanimation, reincarnation, or requickening beliefs, in which animals “killed by hunters who employ formulistic magic come back to life again” (Speck et al. 1951: 84). Masters of animals tend to be identified with “cosmic forms, especially the sun and woman” (Slotten 1966: 189). Cherokee Little People, as masters of animals, possess the requisite powers to reconstitute, renew, and revivify game animals. In the story, “The Little People of Standing Rock” a hunter comes across a house in the watery realm where he is invited to eat, “When he had finished eating the raccoon, they cleared off the scraps and put them in a barrel which was placed near the fireplace. Then afterwhile when they took the lid off the barrel, a live raccoon emerged” (Kilpatrick and Kilpatrick 1964: 80–81). The Cherokee also recognize a red, shape-shifting giant known as Judaculla (He-Has-Them-Slanting), an earthly master of game who has vertical “slanted” pupils characteristic of ambush predators (Banks et al. 2015). Judaculla owns all the game in the mountains and Cherokee hunters are only allowed to take them with his blessing. When Judaculla is invoked in formulaic hunting songs, the hunter first prays to the fire from which he draws his omens, then to the reed from which he makes his arrows, followed by supplications to Judaculla. And then he offers prayers to the animals he wishes to kill (Loubser 2005, 2009, Loubser and Ashcraft 2020; Loubser et al. 2018; Mooney 1900b: 342). Cherokee masters of game who reside in the cosmic realm are represented by the culture heroes Kana’tĭ (Lucky Hunter) and his wife Selu (Earth Mother), and their sons Chaga’see and Chawa’see, the Hero Twins. As the Cherokee archetypical

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hunter, Kana’tĭ, controls game animals and only lets out a sufficient number as he needs them. The Twins, as mythic narrative protagonists, free the imprisoned animals, which their father has carefully hidden, for everyone to hunt (Loubser et al. 2018: 225; Mooney 1888, 1900a). As James Mooney (1900a: 243) recorded, the Twins “then started up the mountain to where their father kept the game. When they got to the place, they raised the rock and a deer came running out.” After the deer escaped, then came out “droves of raccoons, rabbits, and all the other fourfooted animals.” Masters of animals are associated with elite behavior, hierarchy, ritual institutions, and social inequality. For instance, Mary Helms (1998: 178–179) argues that the antecedents of aristocratic attributes stem from cosmological “Otherness,” including masters of animals, totemic landscapes, and the human dead. Concepts of aristocracy are rooted in the personification of ideas about the nature of the universe and the structure of the cosmos. Thus, the basis of hierarchy or heterarchy informs the entangled social relationships of aristocrats, commoners, and other-thanhuman persons. Animal masters, guardian animals, and masters of animals, while often overlapping in the perception of eastern North American Indigenous people, are predicated on a philosophy of renewal of spiritual forces. Beliefs in requickening are reinforced through charter narratives that dramatize the cyclical flow of life and death. These magical performances often involve theatrical props and animated figures of animal masters, guardian animals, and masters of animals. Their materialization provides important insights into sacred ecologies through the windows of archaeological and iconographic interpretations.

Materialization of Supernatural Gamekeepers Next we turn to the three modes of animal–human relationships manifested as cosmic and earthly beings, whose imagery was typically crafted and visualized through the institutional context of communities of practice embedded in corporate descent groups, ritual sodalities, and social houses. The materialization of these other-than-human beings is illustrated in an account by Father Jacques Marquette, who describes an Illini Calumet ceremony he witnessed in 1673 during his Mississippi Valley explorations. As he observed, the participants laid mats as a “carpet upon which to place with honor the God of the person who gives the Dance; for each person has his own god, which they call their Manitou. This is a serpent, a bird, or other similar thing, of which they have dreamed while sleeping, and in which they place all their confidence for the success of their war, their fishing, and their hunting. Near this Manitou, and at its right, is placed the Calumet3 in honor of which the feast is given.”

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Calumets are Native American sacred pipes used in peace and war ceremonies.

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Fig. 12.1 Beaver bowl from the Colvin Lake Site, Ballard County, Kentucky (15BA31), Photograph by David H. Dye

He continues, Afterward, all come to take their seats in a circle under the [arbor] branches; but each one, on arriving, must salute the Manitou. This he does by inhaling the smoke [from the calumet pipe], and blowing it from his mouth upon the Manitou. (Marquette 1899: 131–134)

The materialization and requickening of the Illini Manitou allowed its animation, renewal, or revivification through legerdemain theatrics, resulting in the incarnation of the conjured and supplicated being. Thus, the participants regarded the materialized image of the Manitou as an animated, sentient being, not a representation or proxy. This hypostatization of religious belief informs the archaeological and iconographic record, aided by ethnographic and ethnohistoric observations. Manitous represent a widespread phenomenon of anthropomorphic images serving as intermediaries between human supplicants and transcendental beings (Dye 2020b). However, the dichotomy of humans and other-than-human beings should be appreciated as a Western construct (Ingold 1996, 2012), rather than an inflexible, binary Indigenous partition. In this section, I argue for Lower Mississippi Valley ceramic vessels crafted as animistic “effigies” that reference animal masters, guardian animals, and masters of animals.

Beaver Animal Masters Animal masters, crafted in durable form as Mississippian ceramic imagery, served in part as venerated figurines and statuary possessing the potential for animacy. One earthly manifestation of the animal master is the beaver, represented as “effigy” bowls, which circulated in the American Midsouth and Midwest from the late thirteenth to early fifteenth centuries (Fig. 12.1). Their archaeological context suggests associations with an aristocratic element of Mississippian society, perhaps beaver ritual sodalities and associated social houses (Dye 2019a, 2020c).

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Medicine societies flourished throughout eastern North America, and among them were those honoring and supplicating beavers as masters of the watery realm, in addition to other Beneath World other-than-human persons, especially canines, felines, serpents, and various water spirits. In these ritual contexts, beavers are regarded as guardians, medicine animals, and powerful healers. One of the most detailed descriptions of an eastern North American Beaver religious sodality is the Chawi Pawnee Beaver Ceremony (Murie 1981; Wedel and Parks 1985), for whom the beaver is the leader of the animal medicine lodge (Dorsey 1904b: 334 notes 62, 215, 350). Beaver and otter, being two of the most powerful “medicine-men”, may be requickened and having the power to exhale magical breath (Dorsey 1904b: 334 note 68). As beavers are the leaders of the medicine men in the animal lodge and chiefs of the four-footed medicine men, cosmic beavers teach healing rituals and songs to humans (Dorsey 1904b: 352 note 232). Such beaver pelts are imbued with considerable agency and power (Dorsey 1906: 241). Through medicine lodge rituals, the beaver once revivified could in turn requicken hibernating animals each spring, a metaphoric renewal of life (Murie 1981: 201–319). The ritual paraphernalia includes “black” and “white” beavers, the taxidermied animals being the source of great powers are placed on an altar to be honored, requickened, and supplicated. The dark and light beavers register oppositional qualities: Above World and the Beneath World, day and night, land and watery realm, and life and death. The Beaver ritual sodality as a secret society is restricted to a corps of immediate relatives, and those who had paid for the ceremony and its requisite medicines. As new life is breathed into the stuffed beavers and their bundles through a requickening smoke offering, the powers are passed from the beavers to the human ritual host. Upon the beavers receiving new life and being “reawakened,” the doctors representing the various animal lodges approach the two beavers, offer presents, and solicit the beaver’s blessings and powers. Additional ritual gear includes a bowl that is central to the ceremony, suggesting archaeologically derived beaver effigy bowls materialize a crucial plot element for Mississippian beaver sodality charter narratives as well as the overall structure of the beaver medicine lodge ritual. The Pawnee Beaver ritual has two purposes. One, the performance of legerdemain, such as arrow swallowing, allows participating doctors to draw upon their dream visions and to demonstrate their “beaver” powers before the other doctors and the uninitiated. Second, renewal visually communicates and reinforces the idea of the ongoing cycle of life, symbolized by the beavers who reinvigorate and requicken the hibernating watery realm animals. In addition to the Chawi Pawnee, the Cherokee also supplicate dark and light beavers, who are called upon to renew the soul and to ward off evil presaged by dreams of sudden death resulting from hostile conjurations of some secret enemy (Mooney 1900b: 9). The Cherokee and Pawnee black and white beavers may be represented in the archaeological record by what appear to be pairs of beaver bowls at Mississippian

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towns (Dye 2019a). 4 These “beaver-with-a-stick” effigy bowls may serve as archaeological proxies for watery animal renewal sodalities that circulated in the Midsouth and Midwest through population movements and ritual purchase among interconnected aristocratic cohorts and social houses. Rather than viewing ceramic effigies, such as the Mississippian beaver bowls, as mundane food vessels, it is more profitable to consider them as animistic accoutrements that form one component of a larger ritual program, replete with bundles, charter myths, dances, legerdemain props, and songs.

Otter Guardian Spirits Guardian animal spirits have close, personal relationships with individuals who solicit good fortune and power from their animal benefactors. They may be visualized as head gear, other-than-human imagery, pars pro toto motifs, and ritual regalia, all of which constitute animated and power-bestowing elements. While the earthly iteration of guardian spirits is seen in a multitude of animals, the cosmic imagery of guardian animals, on the other hand, appears as other-than-human beings that may shape shift or transform from culture heroes into animal-like transcendental beings visualized as Above World, Beneath World, or watery realm birds, canines, carnivores, felines, and serpents. Otters, as watery realm beings, are often affiliated with medicine societies through the use of otter pelt bundles, which consist of multiple and varied animal body parts (Harrington 1914; Weeks 2009). The otter medicine bag “symbolizes a spirit having the power to assume any desired form” (Hoffman 1888: 220). For Central Algonkians, the otter was educated in the mysteries of the Midewiwin and became the intermediary between the culture hero, Nanabozho, and the Ojibwa people (Harrison 1989: 83). Bacqueville de la Potherie noted that the late seventeenth century Miami “had for weapons the skins of serpents and otters, which, they said, brought death to those on whom they cast the spell, and restored life to those whom they wished [to live]” (Blair 1912, vol. 2: 87). Entree into Winnebago secret medicine societies, i.e. bison, grizzly bear, night, and water spirit, is gained by purchase and by being “shot” with an otter pelt bundle, leading to the acquisition of power through dream visions (Radin 1911). These acquired and bestowed powers are connected with the “healing of wounds, the curing of disease, the ability to transform one’s self into any animal or object at will, the performance of seemingly impossible tricks, and lastly the practice of evil magic” (Radin 1911: 189). Additional powers include the ability to prolong life and to assure a successful passage of the soul to the future world and its return to this life again.

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Florence Street Cemetery (American Bottom), Moundville (Black Warrior River), Noel Cemeteries (Middle Cumberland Region), Sandy Woods (Cairo Lowland Region).

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Fig. 12.2 Otter “tea pot” from the Kent (aka Lipsky) site (3LE8). Photograph by David H. Dye

Mississippian potters portrayed cosmic guardian spirit otters in ceramic form as “tea-pot” bottles, crafted in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in the northern portion of the Lower Mississippi Valley (Griffin 1951: 172–173; Moore 1908: 483–484, 1911: 404–405, 470) (Fig. 12.2). While these ceramic effigies appear to reference river otters (Lontra canadensis), the overall shape of their head argues against such a strict Linnaean, taxonomic identification. Otters have elongated bodies and short round heads, while “otter teapot” bottles have round bodies and elongated heads. The primary reason for an identification as otters is the posture of the animal floating on its back, typical of otters. Thus, while the natural referent may be a river otter, the ceramic bottles reference an ethnographically documented and widely known Beneath World animal master, with watery realm markers, including a long head and prominent teeth, characteristic of northern Lower Mississippi Valley water spirits (Dye 2018). Beneath World watery realm spirits are often envisioned as guardian animals, especially cat serpents and underwater panthers (Harrison 1989; Lankford 2007; Reilly 2011). The underwater panther, known as Mishipishu in the Great Lakes region, is a dangerous and powerful sentient being, the head of all water spirits who occupies a complex position in history, traditions, and life worlds (Howard 1960; Howey 2020; Smith 1995). In the present case these watery realm spirits may take the form of a “cosmic” otter, a crepuscular and nocturnal animal, equally agile on land and water. Such anomalous animals of the Beneath World, crafted in ceramic form, were requickened and visualized for their symbolic qualities and values that assumed special meanings in Mississippi Valley worldviews (see Hudson 1976: 139–148). Brian Hayden (2020: 124) notes that such power animals, rather than subsistence animals, appear as iconographic images of therianthropic transformations and portable art in the Upper Paleolithic within the framework of secret societies.

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The Hero Twins as Masters of Animals Masters of animals are depicted as other-than-human beings or persons as cave art, ceramic effigies, copper repoussé plates, rock art, shell cups and gorgets, and stone figurines. One prominent master of animals is the previously mentioned Cherokee culture hero, Kana’tĭ and his sons, the Hero Twins. The immanent, earthly manifestations of the Hero Twins are represented in anthropomorphic form, while their cosmic visualizations are depicted as raptor-footed, winged beings. The Hero Twins’ charter myth and iconography evidences their role in the reincarnation of humans and world renewal (Hall 1997). Masters of animals are also depicted in Cherokee narratives of the sacred landscape. For example, the ridge Kana’tĭ ascended on the way to the cave-like entrance to the sky vault, where he hoarded game animals, is memorialized on the northern side of the Black Mountain range in western Northern Carolina (Loubser et al. 2018: 225; Mooney 1900a: 242–243, 432). Gardner Rock, an elongated boulder on a prominent ridgeline northwest of Black Mountain, contains numerous petroglyphs containing the footprints of the animals released by the Hero Twins (Loubser et al. 2018: 225). Animals and birds escaping through Track Rock Gap in northern Georgia are reported to have left their footprints on various boulders and rocks (Loubser et al. 2018: 225–226; Mooney 1900a: 419). The Yuchi of eastern Alabama/ western Georgia also relate similar stories concerning a master of game who releases deer from a cave (Current-Garcia and Hatfield 1973: 174). According to the Cherokee, the shape shifting Judaculla, an earthly master of game animals, also imprinted his footprints on rock surfaces in northern Georgia (Mooney 1900a: 409–410) (Figs. 12.3a, b). Here, rock art also reveals the footprints of Judaculla, his wife, and their two children, in addition to animal footprints (Loubser 2005, 2009, Loubser and Ashcraft 2020; Loubser et al. 2018: 214–215, 222). Johannes Loubser et al. (2018: 226–227) note that these petroglyphs are almost always located along paths leading to gateways or portals to the cosmic realm or sky world, serving as warnings to hunters who are about to enter dangerous and spiritually charged precincts (Loubser et al. 2018: 227). The rock depicting the tracks of Judaculla, Kana’tĭ, and their families provides important material evidence the actions of earthly and cosmic realm other-than-human-beings and associated mythic narratives. Beliefs in earthly and comics realm masters of game, such as Judaculla and Kana’tĭ may have been widespread, based on the proximity of anthropomorphic and animal footprints carved in rock art (Coy et al. 1997: 151–162; Duncan and Diaz-Granados 2018; Loubser et al. 2018; Sabo et al. 2018; Simek et al. 2018; Wagner 2018, Wagner et al. 2018). James Duncan and Carol Diaz-Granados (2018: 53) note footprints, along with aviamorphs and bilobed arrows, being engraved as rock art in eastern Missouri, as well as being employed by the Osage Native American Church. Aviamorths may represent human and other-than-human shape shifting. For example, George Lankford (2008: 139–162) notes that the Hero Twins could transform themselves into crested birds. Bilobed arrow imagery is significant in its portrayal as an

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Fig. 12.3 (a) Judaculla Rock, Jackson County, North Carolina. Richard Chacon appears behind the large boulder. Photograph courtesy of Yamilette Chacon

instrument of rebirth and requickening associated with iconographic depictions of the Twins (Dye 2017a: 91; Hall 1997). The association of bird imagery and bilobed arrows with footprints in rock art further confirms the Hero Twins as masters of game. As game releasers, the Hero Twins are materialized as transcendental other-thanhuman beings in a variety of media, with the most frequent forms being the adorno rims of Mississippian ceramic bowls (Lankford and Dye 2014) (Fig. 12.4). Ceramic effigies of the Earth Mother as both a guardian spirit (Dye 2020a, b, c, d) and mistress of animals (Prentice 1986) are also prominent in the northern Lower Mississippi Valley (Fig. 12.5). These iconic images of mythical beings, other than human persons, and deities as supernatural gamekeepers, underscore and visualize connections and crucial entanglements among animals and humans. As Erica Hill (2013: 127) points out, the interconnected relations among “members of human and various animal societies were relational; they were social in nature, involved reciprocal exchanges, and adhered to rules for living and codes for conduct.” Supernatural gamekeepers were materialized in numerous ways to visualize their relationality, often in the form of sacra, including ritual accoutrements, gear, and props, some of which involved the theatrics of renewal and requickening. Beliefs in reincarnation and revival were reinforced by ritual actors, undergirding the social

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Fig. 12.4 Hero Twins Adorno Rim Bowl, Lawrence County, Arkansas. Courtesy of the Saint Louis Science Center, Catalog # 8x43. Photograph by David H. Dye

Fig. 12.5 Earth Mother Bottle from the Bradley site (3CT7), Crittenden County, Arkansas. Photograph by David H. Dye

logic and institutional organization of entanglements among cohorts of animals, humans, and other-than-human beings. Such social institutions, including ritual sodalities, are envisioned as “durable social containers that allow people to flex and adapt them to a variety of purposes” (Kowalewski and Birch 2020: 40; see also Hayden 2018, 2020; Holland-Lulewicz et al. 2020; Ware 2014).

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Requickening, Ritual Practice, and Game Animal Renewal The perpetual renewal of animals and humans is conceived as the cycling of an ongoing pool of spiritual forces residing in caves, the Beneath World, mountains, and the watery realm. Through appropriate rituals, hoarded animals may be replenished by supernatural gamekeepers to ensure that the renewal of life is ongoing. Thus, while humans could be reincarnated through birth or ritual adoption, animals too could be requickened through formulaic, magical incantations and proper ritual protocols involving their body parts, especially bones and other essences such as blood; thus, “the bones of deer are reborn as deer, and so must be preserved” (Alexander 1916: 292–293). Beavers too could be reincarnated if hunters “treated bones with respect” (Krech 1999: 206). According to the Cherokee, an animal could be resurrected from drops of blood (Mooney 1900a: 262), and that reanimation occurs when “an animal killed by the hunter or otherwise is again revived in the same form, and enters a new phase of life, to be again killed, or to die naturally, as the case may be” (Mooney and Olbrechts 1932: 27). In this section, I discuss how rebirth and renewal was inculcated and reinforced among eastern North Americans through ritual sodalities and their associated charter narratives, dramatic theatrics, iconographic imagery, and symbolic weaponry. The institutional organization for renewal and requickening beliefs lies in the ritual sodality, which originate through dream visions of animal guardians and is reinforced by legerdemain theatrics. Ritual sodalities are restrictive, secretive institutions that require exorbitant fees and maintain holds over esoteric knowledge and ritual goods (Hayden 2018, 2020; Ware 2014). The source of sodality authority and empowerment lies in its performances of miracles through sleight of hand skills, which demonstrate powers obtained from guardian animals and other spiritual forces, including the renewal of game animals. Within the sodality and among its members, legerdemain dramatizes and extolls sodality controls over the death, health, life, and longevity of both animals and humans. Legerdemain theatrics in which the dead are resurrected undergird the authority and power of ritual sodalities, along with witchcraft accusations (Dye 2020a). Ritual sodalities are born through dream visions, during which a person is bestowed with animistic sacra, dances, esoteric knowledge, guardian spirits, songs, and supernatural powers by transcendental donor animals (Dorsey 1905: 20). These ritual institutions frequently expired; as fragile and short-lived corporate groups they are continually being recast and reformed (Golla 1975: 50; Howard 1965: 113). In this respect ritual institutions are “ever-changing and never-changing” (Plog and Solemeto 1997). Charter narratives account for the origin of ritual sodalities as being bestowed by culture hero donors to individual recipients, which in turn establishes other-thanhuman roles, legitimizes elite social positions in the power structure and underwrites institutions and social statuses (Keyes 1994). For example, mythic stories of Earth Mother, the Hero Twins, Morning Star, Red Horn (aka He-Who-Wears-HumanHeads-As-Earrings), Storms-As-He-Walks, and Turtle chartered their respective

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religious sodalities. Their activities provided narratives of renewal and requickening, often involving decapitated (Brown and Dye 2007) and otherwise deceased culture heroes and other-than-human persons (Dye 2017a). These narratives articulate how culture heroes released animals from their ogre owners and how they could revive animals, humans, and other-than-human beings. Mythic narratives are not told on ordinary occasions nor without payment of valued objects. Considered private property, they belong to religious practitioners who form a tightknit sodality, or to individuals who possess the mythic charters that extol the origins of their medicine powers (Dorsey 1906: 241). Mythic narratives not only charter religious institutions but also empower the crucial roles animal masters play for human interactions with game animals, providing mandates are observed for correct and proper behavior by hunter suppliants through ritual practice centering on harmony, honor, propitiation, and purification. Thus, success in hunting is granted to the hunter who continually, dutifully, and faithfully performs specific supplicating rituals and adheres to prescribed restrictions, especially rendering respect to the game animal in terms of its killing and subsequent handling of body parts. The reincarnation or renewal of animals and humans in eastern North American is revealed through theatrics produced by the institution of the ritual sodality, typically comprised of an aristocratic element imbued with entrenched rights, hereditary prerogatives, and ordained privileges (Fortune 1932; Holder 1958a, b, 1970). The performance of legerdemain theatrics demonstrates powers granted by animal guardians to ritual practitioners. These public dramatic sleight of hand acts highlight the ability of requickening and renewal by resurrecting the dead. Medicine lodges or ritual sodalities are empowered by their bundles, charter myths, dances, esoteric knowledge, legerdemain skills, regalia, rituals, and songs. Legerdemain theatrics demonstrate the ritual medicine person’s deadly powers, while, the uninitiated witness these terrifying acts in a state of awe, as they “held their hands before their faces and watched the performance with side glances only” (Will 1928: 57). Upon observing such miraculous demonstrations, the general populace understood that medicine people could not only requicken the dead, but that animal masters and culture heroes could do likewise. Eastern North American religious sodalities are founded on the concept of commonly-held guardian spirits and personal patrons. Guardian animals possess magical powers that could aid beneficiaries by protecting them from danger and harm, as well as imbuing recipients with sacred powers and special skills, including legerdemain techniques, which exhibit hierophantic powers used to overcome death or requicken the dead, including animal bundles that could be transformed into living animals (Swanton 1918: 62–63). Sleight of hand acts, in which animals and humans are requickened or resuscitated after dismemberment and death showcased one’s power to renew life and reify the idea that animals could be killed and then revivified. Thus, ritual legerdemain reinforces the logic that society members could renew or requicken life forces for good or evil (Dye 2017b, 2019b). Symbolic weaponry assumes a crucial role in legerdemain theatrics as animistic sacra. Often considered weapons of the deities, such objects were wielded by ritual sodality members during staged performances. Axes found at the Spiro site in

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eastern Oklahoma, for example, were crafted as crested birds and watery realm spirits, suggesting they possessed animistic qualities (Dye 2020c). The Omaha consider the war club to be associated with Thunder Bundles and to be “the weapon of the Thunder beings” (i.e., Hero Twins) (Fletcher and La Flesche 1911: 491). In the second half of the nineteenth century, Bear’s Belly, a prestigious member of the Arikara Bear Medicine Lodge, demonstrated his powers to withstand death by presenting his abdomen to a fellow lodge member, who sunk a war ax into Bear’s Belly’s stomach (Fig. 12.6). Later, the medicine lodge members withdrew the ax from the uninjured warrior before an astonished audience (Dye 2020c: 168–169; Will 1928: 64). In another legerdemain theatric, a man was decapitated, but the headless trunk continued to dance. When the head was replaced, it was reversed. Finally, when placed correctly on the body, all was in order again (Will 1928: 58). Caddoan and Mississippian symbolic weaponry has a long history as ritual implements at the Spiro site in eastern Oklahoma, comprising exotic arrows, axes, bifaces, clubs, knives, and maces (Brown 1996; Dye 2020c; Sievert and Rogers 2011; Trubitt 2020). Maces, in particular, appear to have been not only symbolic weapons but also skeuomorphs for otter bundles (Dye 2021a). Symbolic weaponry is virtually confined to the Hero Twins who are depicted brandishing crown-form maces, exaggerated bifaces, and monolithic axes in cave paintings and on repoussé copper plates, marine shell cups and gorgets, and rock art imagery (Diaz-Granados 2004; Dye 2004). As the animistic and magical sacra of other-than-human persons employed in the hands of ritual sodality performers, symbolic weaponry reveals though dramatic theatrics the ability and capacity of ritual practitioners to kill a ritual society associate or initiate, and then miraculously return them to the living by requickening their life force, soul, or spirit. The consistency in long-term ritual deployment of symbolic weaponry suggests conservative thematic continuities existed in ritual programs based on the recurring imagery of specific animals, culture heroes, and other-than-human beings. Indigenous eastern North American iconography materializes religious sodality charter myths and illustrates staged legerdemain theatrics. In some instances, imagery portrays the dead, often in the form of a decapitated head, being retrieved in order to be requickened, especially in cave paintings, engraved shell gorgets, repoussé copper plates, and rock art, as well as illustrating requickening instruments, such as bilobed arrows as prominent head gear elements (Brown and Dye 2007). Numerous other-than-human beings are also visualized, including animal masters, guardian animals, and masters of animals, especially in ceramic form. Iconography provides an important means of extracting interpretations from visual imagery and conveying crucial information about beliefs, deities, ontologies, and institutions (Barrier and Carmody 2020; Diaz-Granados et al. 2018; Dye 2021b; Knight 2013; Lankford et al. 2011; Singleton and Reilly 2020). Iconographic imagery reinforces traditional beliefs in the cycles of rebirth and renewal through scenes and tableaux in which otherworldly beings, especially the Hero Twins, ritually engage in prestidigitation performances and renewal practices. For example, Hightower-style shell gorgets may be arranged in a storyboard-like sequence (Reilly and Garber 2011), revealing an allegorical narrative that charters

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Fig. 12.6 Bear’s Belly, Arikara. Photograph by Edward Curtis, 1908. North American Great Plains. Photogravure. From Edward Curtis, The North American Indian: The Complete Portfolios, vol. 5, pl. 150. National Cowboy & Western History Museum. 1979.10.162.25.03. Gift of John Wayne

Hero Twins ritual institutions and specific scenarios of renewal and requickening. Hightower-style “mortal combat” theme gorgets depict the widespread ritual sodality act of legerdemain in which the Hero Twins engage in ritual decapitation, reminiscent of the Arikara example noted above (Dye 2004: Fig. 6). Restoring each other back to life, an act of renewal or requickening, is a well-known Hero Twins mythic theme (Dye 2017a; Hankoff 1977; King 2011; Lankford and Dye 2014; Myers 2002; Radin 1915, 1948, 1954; Thompson 1929). Radin (1950: 407) observes that “we find that the heroes [Hero Twins] are repeatedly killed and that one always restores the other to life again.” The social logic of animal renewal was deeply embedded in religious institutions in eastern North America, communicated and perpetuated through the ritual sodality. Charter narratives empowered and underwrote elite social positions and their connections with ancestors, other-than-human beings, and transcendental animals. Reincarnation or requickening of both animals and humans was visualized within the context of ritual sodalities with performances of miraculous theatrics demonstrating the supernatural powers of ritual practitioners to renew game animals through the supplication of animal masters, guardian spirits and masters of animals. These beliefs allowed, if not promoted, overhunting of game animals through the beliefs that ritual practitioners and supernatural game keepers would renew animals as long as the proper protocols and rules were obeyed and taboos avoided.

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Overharvesting and Supernatural Gamekeepers Valerius Geist (2018: 5) repudiates the idea that “North America was a wilderness, rich in wildlife, and inhabited by a very few natives.” He argues that North America was thoroughly “civilized” by human hands, closely “exploited by a dense human population, with great deficits in wildlife.” Game animals were only plentiful in areas with strongly fortified settlements and dangerous buffer zones, where an ecology of fear promoted natural sanctuaries in which wildlife could remain largely unmolested (Chacon and Mendoza 2007; Kay 1994). Geist (2018: 7) points out that early sixteenth century observers, such as Cabeza de Vaca, found “a landscape densely populated and heavily exploited, with availability reflected in the size of the tribes. Hunger was pervasive.” In this section, I examine two early contact period examples of overhunting: beaver and white-tailed deer. Animal–human relations, including game animals, other-than-human beings, and humans, were played out in both hunting and ritual activities (Fridberg 2015). Likewise, supernatural gamekeepers as part of this dynamic prevailed in a sacred ecology, a world constituted by powers that took the form of other-than-human persons, which could appear in animal guise (Harrod 2000: xiv). Importantly, ritual economy models aid in interpreting how ritual concerns affect economic behavior, i.e., the “process of provisioning and consuming that materializes and substantiates worldview for managing meaning and shaping interpretation” (McAnany and Wells 2008: 1). Thus, appreciating the links among economic dynamics, political efficacy, ritual institutions, and sacred authority is paramount for understanding the crucial role played by supernatural gamekeepers (McAnany 2008; Mills 2004; Spielmann 2002, 2007; Wells 2006).

Beaver Trapping Seventeenth century overharvesting of beaver populations in New England and eastern Canada provides an important record and testament of Indigenous belief systems and the potential for overharvesting game animals. As a shift took place from the near-extinct European beavers in the northern reaches of Russia and Scandinavia, to Canada and New England where beavers were initially plentiful, fashion trends and social changes in early seventeenth century Europe fueled demands for North American beaver pelts (Harrison 1960); in fact, the “real push behind Champlain’s enterprise was the search for beaver” (Crean 1962: 380). Between 1620 and 1630, New England trappers took more than 10,000 beaver pelts per year in Connecticut and Massachusetts alone, and in the following decade some 80,000 beavers were taken annually from the Hudson River and western New York to be transformed into pelt hats in England (Moloney 1931; Naiman et al. 1988). Théodat-Gabriel Sagard observed, after a visit to the Huron in 1620, that the end for the beaver was in sight (Wrong 1939). Bruce Trigger (1981: 27) notes

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that the depletion of the beaver population was underway, or complete, prior to 1630. Thus, by the mid-seventeenth century, trappers had reduced beaver populations to virtual extinction in New England. Most Northern Algonquians believed if an animal was slain by a hunter who broke the rules or taboos, then the beaver master would withhold beavers from the hunter. Over-trapping and wasteful killing did not affect the willingness of the beaver master to release their charges, as death was but a prelude to rebirth; although the beaver might be dead, their souls are only waiting for rebirth, often through quickening their bones. The Indigenous system of hunting behavior and belief was rooted in reincarnation and ritual taboos, diminishing any concern for conservation and sustainability; it was widely believed that the more beaver were hunted, the more plentiful they became. Given this ontology, conservation becomes irrelevant because game animals will inevitability be reborn from an inexhaustible pool (Krech 1999: 201–209).

White-Tailed Deer Hunting Likewise, in the southern colonies in the succeeding century, white-tailed deer were also hunted to near extirpation by Indigenous hunters. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, as many as 85,000 skins were exported each year from South Carolina and Virginia combined (Krech 1999: 159–160). Once the slave trade began to subside in the aftermath of the Yamasee war (1715–1717), “pressure on deer populations rapidly mounted as peace returned and colonials and Indians alike sought to resume accustomed levels of trade and consumption” (Cobb 2019: 159). With the return to intensive hunting, hundreds of thousands of deerskins were exported through Charleston, South Carolina alone (Crane 1928: 111–112). When the trade was its height in the eighteenth century, up to one million deer annually were being killed to supply domestic and exchange needs (Braund 1993; Krech 1999: 163, 285). White-tailed deer virtually disappeared from parts of the South in the eighteenth century, being hunted to extreme scarcity and even to local extinction (Krech 1999: 163). The Southeastern Indian’s single focus was “how to kill as many deer as possible” (Krech 1999: 170). Geist (2018: 7) writes that deer “survived only away from people, forcing hunters to carry fire-wood and water to the places to hunt deer”. Geist’s interpretations of Cabeza de Vaca’s observations supports Charles Kay’s (1994) hypothesis of Indigenous people as efficient, if not lethal, keystone predators, with game animals only abundant in buffer zone refugia between polities. While the overexploitation of animals has been linked to modern worldwide economic and political transformations, overharvesting has a long history prior to European contact, which may be credited to ritual beliefs in renewal and requickening. Thus, ritual relations with game animals, either as animal masters, guardian animals, or masters of animals, would not prevent the overharvesting of targeted game animals.

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Animal Renewal and Game Harvesting Do eastern North American beliefs in animal gamekeepers promote animal overharvesting and near extinction, or do they foster game conservation and sustainability? What is the nature of Indigenous harmonious relations with game animals? I have argued here that Indigenous people envisioned a dawn time, preexisting order from which power, status, and wealth were perpetuated through cosmic feasting, legerdemain theatrics, and ritual performances through the agency of ritual sodalities. This “moral economy,” characterized by elite privilege cemented in ritual practice, rested on “natural authorities” (Ziblatt 2017: 28), including animal masters, guardian animals, and masters of animals as animal tutelaries and supernatural gamekeepers. In this sense, animistic sacra, other-than-human beings, and the ritual landscape were thoroughly entangled, promoting overhunting practices predicated by reincarnation beliefs sedimented in an animistic ontology and sacred ecology. Though beliefs and ritual practice transformed over time, an overall conservatism prevailed, which promoted thematic conceptions of reincarnation, renewal, requickening, and resurrection of both animals and humans. Based on this worldview, beaver in the northeast and white-tailed deer in southeastern North America were hunted almost to extinction, both to acquire hides to be traded for the acquisition of guns and to purchase other Western manufactures. Overharvesting extended well into the late precontact period based on beliefs in game animal reincarnation, renewal, and requickening, as documented by iconographic evidence, as well as the archaeological presence of buffer zones, fortified towns, and endemic warfare (Dye 2002, 2009). Geist (2018: 6) argues that humans in eastern North America were dominant, key-stone predators, who had a disproportionate effect on the natural environment relative to their small population size, altering the environment around them and decreasing overall numbers and varieties of animals. Prior to human arrival wildlife abundance was at an all-time high in diversity and quantity during the Late Pleistocene Bølling oscillation but was followed by massive megafauna extinctions in the succeeding Younger Dryas. A partial recovery ensued, but animal depletions continued as human populations increased. A resurgence in game populations took place after disease and slaving virtually decimated Native American populations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But near-extinctions of game animals, especially beaver and white-tailed deer, returned again in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with population growth and increased demands for hides and pelts. Severe continental depletion continued with devastating efficiency prompted by rampant market hunting throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century. Recovery in the mid-twentieth century only resulted from the adoption of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation (Geist 1995; Organ et al. 2012). Frank Speck and Leonard Bloom, with Cherokee collaborator Will West Long (Speck et al. 1951: 84), observe that “animals called out and killed by hunters who employ the formulistic magic come back to life again,” thus there could be no diminishment in game from overhunting. Indigenous social logic argues that when

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game is scarce it is due to neglect of rituals or improper treatment of animals and their remains, rather than overhunting. Cherokee beliefs in reanimation, reincarnation, and requickening underscore their reasoning that one “killing begat potentially three to six future killings,” thus, conservation and sustainability would have been a foreign, if not senseless, concept to game harvesting logic (Krech 1999: 171). Charles Bishop (1978) notes that beliefs in reincarnation and renewal were so embedded and strong that it was not until Indigenous people suffered extreme deprivation that they were forced to give up attempts to survive on virtually exterminated large animals. Thomas Neumann (2002: 174) points out that Indigenous people had a profound effect on the structure of the eastern North American forest community during some 4000 years of interaction with animals and plants; there “never was a time from the middle Holocene on that people were not full participants in that system [forest ecosystems] and were not major agents in the structure of the ecological community.” Beliefs in the continual and ongoing recycling and requickening of game animals were widely embraced throughout eastern North America and were predicated on an ideology of reanimation, reincarnation, and renewal (Mills and Slobodin 1994).

Conclusion Three primary agents of animal–human relationships may be identified in eastern North America: animal masters, guardian animals, and masters of animals, as well as their material correlates, including the imagery of other-than-human-beings. Beliefs in reanimation, reincarnation, and requickening of both animals and humans countered a logic of conservation; harmonious ecological relations were envisioned as being founded on proper ritual protocols and respect for game animals. The relationships among Indigenous people and game animals, both cosmic and quotidian, were entangled in multiple ways, with these interconnected relationships changing over time, but also remaining ritually coherent and consistent. The basic thematic strictures of traditional beliefs concerning game animals, supernatural game keepers, and guardian animals may have remained relatively stable, extending into the deep past. The social logic of reanimation, reincarnation, and renewal of both animals and humans were prominent in eastern North America, serving to counter conservation and sustainability practices. If ritual practices could bring the human dead back to life, then culture heroes and supernatural gamekeepers could also reincarnate game animals, only releasing them if proper ritual procedures, protocols, and taboos were observed. An important component of Indigenous belief systems is based on concepts of re-animation, reincarnation, renewal, and requickening, which could only be achieved through repeated and sustained ritual practice. Extending the social logic of human reincarnation and world renewal to game animals has significant implications for considerations of long-term game harvesting practices and Indigenous perceptions of sustained interconnections and relations with animals, which

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non-Indigenous people often consider as over-harvesting or wasteful hunting and trapping. In this sense, understanding eastern North American belief systems is crucial for assessing the degrees to which Indigenous people hunted and trapped game animals and their rationale for “over-exploitation” and in some cases the nearextinction of animals. Importantly, charter myths and legerdemain theatrics demonstrated, perpetuated, and showcased the social logic of game animal renewal. I have suggested that animal–human entanglements had earthly and celestial dimensions, in addition to their respective materializations. Ritual performances honored and supplicated both animals and culture heroes, granting access to game animals and providing hunters success in hunting, based on their adherence to prescribed restrictions and ritual practices. Each mode exhibits varying outcomes that result in differences in animal/other-than-human being/human entanglements. Cave paintings, ceramic effigies, ledger drawings, rock art (petroglyphs/pictographs), and copper, shell, and stone imagery materialize these three modes of animal–human relationships and their earthly and celestial expressions. Finally, the sacred landscape becomes an animated canvas upon which the narratives of animal–human relationships are imprinted and played out for these three entangled modes. Acknowledgments I express my gratitude to Richard Chacon for his invitation to contribute this chapter and for his helpful comments and to Jannie Loubser for his valuable suggestions on earlier drafts. I also thank Robert Sharp for his insights into Mississippian iconography and our many discussions of ritual and religion over the past decade as we photographed countless collections of Mississippian objects. Many of the ideas concerning Mississippian cosmology and iconography originated in the Mississippian Iconographic workshop hosted by Kent Reilly and sponsored by the Center for the Study of the Arts and Symbolism of Ancient America, Texas State University, and funded by the Lannan Foundation of Santa Fe, New Mexico. My appreciation to Yamilette Chacon (James Madison University) for permission to use her photograph of Judaculla Rock (Fig. 12.3a), to Jannie Loubser (Stratum Unlimited LLC) for the re-drawing of Judaculla Rock (Fig. 12.3b), to Krista Hampton (Saint Louis Science Center) for consent to use the Twins bowl (Fig. 12.4), and to Kera Newby (National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum) for Edward Curtis’ portrait of Bear’s Belly (Fig. 12.6).

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Dr. David H. Dye is a Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Memphis. He has conducted archaeological research throughout the American Southeast. His research interests include the archaeology, ethnohistory, and iconography of the Lower Mississippi Valley. His long-term interests include archaeological photography, iconography, ritual practice, secret societies, and warfare in eastern North America.

Chapter 13

Supernatural Gamekeepers Among the Tsimane’ of Bolivian Amazonia Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares, Tomás L. Huanca, and Victoria Reyes-García

Abstract Oral histories about supernatural gamekeepers (i.e., spiritual beings who own and protect wildlife) are widespread among Indigenous Peoples across the Amazon Basin. Many Indigenous communities have strict culturally prescribed practices and rituals to build relationships of reciprocity with these non-human entities that inhabit the natural world. In this chapter, we review the diverse cultural manifestations of supernatural gamekeepers in the complex and sophisticated spiritual lifeworld of the Tsimane’ people of Bolivian Amazonia. Based on the longitudinal arc of our ethnobiological research among the Tsimane’ since 1999, we show the many ways in which this Amazonian Indigenous group interacts with supernatural gamekeepers and present the ontological underpinnings of such relations. We also describe the breadth and depth of cultural protocols, rules, and rituals that the Tsimane’ employ to build respectful relationships with supernatural gamekeepers. Finally, we discuss the rapid pace at which this socio-cosmology is being eroded and how this, in turn, affects current Tsimane’ hunting practices. Our work highlights how the deep bonds of reciprocity established between the Tsimane’ and supernatural gamekeepers reflect kinship-oriented philosophies along with a powerful ethic of stewardship based on relational values. Á. Fernández-Llamazares (✉) Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA-UAB), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain Department of Animal Biology, Plant Biology and Ecology (BABVE), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] T. L. Huanca Bolivian Center for Research and Integral Social Development (CBIDSI), San Borja, Beni, Bolivia V. Reyes-García Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA-UAB), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. J. Chacon (ed.), The History and Environmental Impacts of Hunting Deities, Conflict, Environment, and Social Complexity 4, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37503-3_13

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Keywords Bolivia · Amazonia · Tsimane’ · Supernatural gamekeepers · Game masters · Animal masters · Chiefs of the forest · Forest guardians · Forest spirits · Ethnobiology · Relational values · Spiritual ecology · Conservation

Introduction Throughout the Amazon, ideas of reciprocity and respect for the natural world influence and regulate wildlife stewardship in many Indigenous communities (Viveiros de Castro 1998; Fernández-Llamazares and Virtanen 2020). Many Amazonian Indigenous groups are partially animists, and, under this worldview, they assert that nature -or at least some elements of the natural world- has spiritual significance and holds sacred values (Århem 2003; Comberti et al. 2015). The forest -beyond material contributions- is a provider of spiritual sustenance, with trees and animals being considered active sentient beings, filled with spirits, memories, and history (Kohn 2007, 2013; Virtanen 2019). Moreover, the use of different elements of the forest should be regulated and negotiated, not only with other humans but also with the non-human agencies that inhabit the natural world (Kopenawa and Albert 2013; Fausto 2008; Virtanen 2017). Despite rapid social, economic, and ecological transitions, many Indigenous peoples across the Amazon largely continue to see nature as a world of entities in dialogue with human society, where people must negotiate with spirits in order to be able to use any of the natural elements protected by them (Hirtzel 2007; Fausto 2008; Le Tourneau 2015). Beyond the sacred, this spiritual significance regulates daily interactions with the environment, namely through subsistence livelihood activities. For example, in many Amazonian Indigenous communities, hunting continues to be understood as a process of reciprocal exchange between human and non-human beings (Virtanen 2017; Gambon and Rist 2019). Such ideas of reciprocity are perhaps best reflected in the socio-cosmologies of forest guardians. Forest guardians are spiritual beings who can grant success in hunting, fishing, or other foraging activities to those who show respect for them and the natural elements they protect (Comberti et al. 2015). While such belief is very common in many Amazonian Indigenous societies, it is manifested in culture-specific ways across groups, and depending on the Indigenous group, such animal masters can take different forms and live in different places, in both visible and invisible forms. Similarly, adherence to culturally prescribed behaviors and rituals to establish reciprocity with these non-human agencies varies substantially from one Indigenous group to another (Fernández-Llamazares and Virtanen 2020). From the many oral histories about forest guardians across the Amazon, supernatural gamekeepers are the ones that have probably attracted the most attention from anthropologists and ethnobiologists alike (see Fernández-Llamazares and Virtanen 2020 for a review). Also known and referred to in the scholarly literature as game owners, game masters, animal masters, or chiefs of the forest, supernatural gamekeepers are spiritual beings that coexist with humans in the natural world and protect animals (Comberti et al. 2015). Oral histories about supernatural

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gamekeepers are very common across the Amazon Basin and have been documented among many Amazonian Indigenous groups, such as the Achuar (Chacon 2012), the Apurinã (Virtanen 2017), the Arawete’ (Viveiros de Castro 1992), the Makuna (Århem 2003), the Manchineri (Virtanen et al. 2012), the Matsigenka (Daly and Shepard 2019), the Mosetene (Gambon and Rist 2019), the Munduruku, the SionaSecoya (Vickers 1994), the Tukano (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1976), the Yagua (Chaumeil 2010), or the Yanomami (Kopenawa and Albert 2013). These forest deities are known by a variety of names, including generic names such as Duende (Spanish) in Bolivia, Chullachaqui (Quechua) in Peru, or Curupira (Portuguese, from Tupi origin) in Brazil (Comberti et al. 2015). While it is clear that the notion of supernatural gamekeepers transcends cultural divides, we still lack information on how this complex socio-cosmology is manifested across cultures in context-specific, place-based ways. In this chapter, we review the diverse cultural manifestations of supernatural gamekeepers in the complex and sophisticated socio-cosmological lifeworld of the Tsimane’ people of Bolivian Amazonia. As in many other Amazonian Indigenous societies, the Tsimane’ believe that they share the natural space where they live with a number of spirits who ‘own’ or are responsible for particular elements of the environment, such as trees, stones, water bodies, animals, or animal breeding grounds (Fernández-Llamazares et al. 2017). Also, as in many other Indigenous societies, the Tsimane’ have specific rules, restrictions, practices, customs, taboos, and rituals to regulate people’s behavior in their complex web of relations with these non-human spiritual agencies and the different natural elements they protect (Huanca 2008, 2015; Ellis 1996). Overall, these complex culturally established practices and rituals help the Tsimane’ establish reciprocal relationships with the spirits inhabiting the forest, thereby ensuring continual hunting, fishing, and foraging success (Luz 2013; Reyes-García and Fernández-Llamazares 2019). We acknowledge that we are non-Tsimane’ scholars and that this positionality inevitably affects our understanding of Tsimane’ socio-cosmologies. We, therefore, emphasize that our chapter reflects only a situated interpretation of Tsimane’ oral histories about supernatural gamekeepers, which are explored largely through the lens of ethnobiological theory. We do not claim to speak on behalf of the Tsimane’ community, but we draw on more than two decades of in-depth field-based ethnographic engagement with this group. Since 1999, we have accumulated many months of participant observation among the Tsimane’, including participation in daily activities, celebrations, dialogs, and social gatherings, as well as hundreds of in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted over the years (Huanca 1999, 2008; Fernández-Llamazares 2015; Reyes-García 2001, 2019). Participant observation has allowed us to compile information on the social-ecological context in which Tsimane’ cosmologies are transmitted and reproduced, how they have changed recently, and how they relate to current patterns of wildlife stewardship.

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The Tsimane’ Indigenous Peoples The Tsimane’ are an Indigenous society living in the southwestern Department of Beni, in Bolivian Amazonia. Currently, the Tsimane’ number ca. 14,000 people living in about 125 villages of approximately 20 households, mostly concentrated along riverbanks and logging roads (Reyes-García et al. 2014a). Like many other Amazonian Indigenous populations, the Tsimane’ are experiencing important sociodemographic changes, including population growth, the adoption of new technologies, and increasing involvement in the wider market economy (see Reyes-García and Huanca 2015 for a general overview of the process of change). So, although the traditional Tsimane’ livelihood largely depends on hunting, gathering, and fishing, presently they also practice small-scale shifting agriculture and horticulture and engage in other commercial-oriented activities such as wage labor in cattle ranches or logging and palm thatch harvesting (Fernández-Llamazares et al. 2016). Many Tsimane’ have also started to sell their agricultural products in local markets (Vadez and Fernández-Llamazares 2014). Interestingly, these processes have also resulted in some changes in gender roles in traditional activities, with Tsimane’ women increasingly becoming involved in fishing (Díaz-Reviriego et al. 2017) and hunting (Reyes-García et al. 2020). Despite these new sources of income and livelihood, and partly because of these gendered changes in subsistence activities, forests continue to provide an essential basis for Tsimane’ subsistence, and their culture continues to be deeply intertwined with the Amazonian rainforest (Fernández-Llamazares et al. 2015; Reyes-García et al. 2016, 2018). A Franciscan priest, Gregorio de Bolívar, is responsible for the first known reference to the Tsimane’ people in the year 1621. He was also the first to try-and fail-to convert the Tsimane’ to Catholicism and to settle them in missions (Chicchón 1992; Daillant 2003). Despite the continuous presence of Jesuit, Dominican, and Franciscan missionaries in the region for over two centuries, they did not succeed in making the Tsimane’ sedentary (Daillant 2003). In general, historical accounts depict the Tsimane’ as a particularly elusive group. Escaping from the violence and abuses of Hispanic conquests, the Tsimane’ confined themselves to the upper parts of the Apere and Maniqui Rivers. Hidden in some of the region’s most remote forests (in the Andean piedmont), most Tsimane’ succeeded in resisting Catholic and Protestant incursions into the area from the early seventeenth century until the 1950s (Chicchón 1992; Reyes-García 2001). The same ethnographic works (e.g., Chicchón 1992; Daillant 2003) also describe the Tsimane’ as being a highly mobile society, living in dispersed settlements and lacking central and hierarchical social and political organizations, possibly explaining why they managed to (largely) withstand the evangelization process while remaining relatively isolated up until the mid-twentieth century (Cardús 1886). Moreover, living in areas lacking the commercial resources valued by Europeans (such as gold, silver, or rubber trees), the Apere and Maniqui basins provided an ideal refuge for the Tsimane’ to resist the whirlpool of conquest and illnesses introduced by the arrival of colonists in other parts of the region (Chicchón

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1992). Some authors have argued that, in fact, missionaries succeeded in converting at least some Tsimane’ to Catholicism during the seventeenth century (Pérez Diez 1983; Castillo 1988). Those Tsimane’ that were evangelized evolved into a different ethnic group, now known as Mosetene, which along with the Tsimane’, form a relatively isolated linguistic group in the Amazon (Aldazabal 1988). Despite a belligerent relationship in the past (e.g., Huanca 2008), the Tsimane’ and the Mosetene have been on good terms in recent years. Their respective languages are mutually intelligible (see Sakel 2009). In general, scholars agree that, up until the late 1930s, the Tsimane’ largely maintained a semi-nomadic and self-sufficient way of life, with only sporadic contact with outsiders (e.g., Chicchón 1992; Nordenskiöld 1924; Daillant 2003). However, after the 1952 Bolivian Revolution, the construction of new roads, the logging boom, the land tenure reforms, and the different waves of governmentplanned Andean colonization of the Bolivian Amazon, the Tsimane’ were pushed into increased contact with the national society (Reyes-García et al. 2014a,b). In particular, the arrival of Evangelical missionaries to the area in the 1950s had profound impacts on Tsimane’ culture and beliefs, replacing many animistic rituals with Christian practices (Reyes-García et al. 2010, 2014b). As a case in point, polygamy was largely replaced by monogamy in nuclear households (Daillant 2003), although the traditional practice of cross-cousin marriage continues to be common (Reyes-García et al. 2014b). However, even today, the beliefs held by most Tsimane’ represent a syncretic blend of animist concepts and views introduced by Christian missionaries (Huanca 2015). Tsimane’ wildlife stewardship is articulated through a complex combination of traditional informal institutions and new formal institutions resulting from their integration into national society (Luz 2013). On the one hand, several informal norms embedded in Tsimane’ socio-cosmologies regulate their wildlife stewardship practices as well as their use of forest elements (Reyes-García et al. 2013). Traditionally, these rules were enforced by shamans (locally known as cocojsi’). These elders held socio-political authority and were respected and deferred to for their knowledge of traditional norms, oral history, myths, lineage histories, and for their understanding of how to live in harmony with wildlife and the spiritual world (Reyes-García et al. 2014b). On the other hand, over the last decades, formal rules have started to provide legal delimitation of Indigenous territories and regulation of access and use of the forest (including its wildlife) in accordance with the type of land tenure (Paneque-Gálvez et al. 2013). For instance, the Tsimane’ have the right to engage in subsistence hunting in all the land tenure types in which their villages are settled, but they cannot extract wood from areas under logging concessions (Reyes-García et al. 2014a). Non-indigenous people are not allowed to harvest any forest resources within Indigenous territories (including hunting) unless they have specifically been authorized to do so by the Tsimane’ political organization (i.e., Gran Consejo Tsimane’). Yet, there are several reports of land encroachment within the Tsimane’ territory (Lehm 1994; Reyes-García et al. 2013). Within this new context, the authority of shamans has been replaced by a new political system in which the Tsimane’ are

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increasingly shifting toward younger decision-makers (with skills in the national language) in order to channel their demands to the national society (Reyes-García et al. 2008; Fernández-Llamazares et al. 2015). However, those younger chiefs (locally known as corregidores) have little to no coercive authority, and their main tasks are to conduct meetings in the event of conflicts, help organize community labor events, and represent village interests in meetings with outsiders (Reyes-García et al. 2014a, b).

The Tsimane’ Spiritual World A basic premise underlying the Tsimane’ understanding of the natural world is that humans are entangled in a cosmic web of social relationships with nature and the supernatural beings that protect it (Huanca 2008; Reyes-García and FernándezLlamazares 2019). For the Tsimane’, several lifeforms (including both humans and non-human beings) are considered to be interconnected and mutually interdependent (Riester 1993; Daillant 2003; Fernández-Llamazares et al. 2017). These intricate webs of relationships place humans and non-humans on a similar level, largely due to the Tsimane’ belief that, in the past, animals were in fact humans (Huanca 2015). Only when they were transformed by the gods into their “animal form” did they become prey for humans. However, despite this transformation and because of their common origin with humans, the Tsimane’ need to properly communicate and relate with animals and their guardian spirits (Huanca 2008), as well as with all the other different spirits that inhabit the natural world (Ellis 1996; Riu-Bosoms et al. 2015). The complex relationships that the Tsimane’ establish with the spirits of the forest, which are endowed with life, agency, and power, are addressed in everyday practices (Huanca 2015). Through traditional forms of instruction, younger generations of Tsimane’ are taught to respect the animal masters and acknowledge their presence when they walk through the forest (Schniter 2014). Indeed, many oral histories of the Tsimane’ highlight the interdependence that exists among human beings, animals, plants, and their spiritual worlds (Riester 1978, 1993; Huanca 2015). In these narratives, the forest is generally described as being an extended web of social relations (Ellis, 1996; see Fernández-Llamazares and Cabeza 2018). Moreover, such relational webs are expressed through a set of culturally prescribed rules and guidelines that are taught to individuals since childhood. Traditional stories and chants of the Tsimane’ play a critical role in this regard, illustrating powerful bonds of kinship and reciprocity between humans and non-humans and encoding a strong philosophy of wildlife stewardship (see also Fernández-Llamazares and Lepofsky 2019). Oral histories are central to educating humans on how they should interact with the spirits inhabiting the natural world, ensuring respect and reverence for these entities (Reyes-García and Fernández-Llamazares 2019). The Tsimane’ believe that spirits tend to occupy specific locations in the forest that have great historical and spiritual significance, and such sites provide portals to

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the sacred (Ellis and Araoz 1998; see Cesarino 2011; Wright 2013 or Virtanen and Saunaluoma 2017 for similar examples among other Indigenous groups). Ellis (1996) reports that stones, boulders, and large rock outcrops are associated with animal guardians and other non-human beings. These sacred natural sites are highly valued by the Tsimane’, and there are specific rules regulating human behavior when visiting or using these spirit-filled areas (Riu-Bosoms et al. 2015). Place-specific customs are passed from generation to generation in relation to these spiritual locations, shaping how people should behave at such focal points of spiritual life (Fernández-Llamazares and Cabeza 2018). For instance, many Tsimane’ hunters still appear to avoid sites inhabited by spirits while hunting, particularly locations believed to be inhabited by malevolent or dangerous spirits (Riu-Bosoms et al. 2015). Similarly, when boulders are found near Tsimane’ settlements or prominent rock outcrops are encountered on travels, they are usually commented upon, often with awe if not fear (Ellis 1996). Most of these spiritual sites continue to be associated with a specific material and non-material cultural heritage (see Virtanen and Saunaluoma 2017 for an example from the geometric earthwork landscapes of the Upper Purus, in the Brazilian Amazon). Research on Tsimane’ shamanism is scarce; however, previous ethnographic works indicate that shamans were relatively common in Tsimane’ villages prior to the arrival of missionaries to the area in the 1950s (Huanca 1999, 2008). Shamans performed a variety of roles and functions, including traditional healing, storytelling, and enforcing forms of social control. They were also in charge of teaching and reminding everyone that different elements of nature merited respect and required veneration. The shaman, who helped maintain the balance between the natural and supernatural worlds, held the highest position in the community because of his role in decision-making, maintaining social order, and his ability to communicate with forest spirits and ancestors (Huanca 2008, 2015).

Supernatural Gamekeepers in the Tsimane’ Worldview Ethnographers have documented many different forest guardians and spirits among the Tsimane’, which can be broadly classified into three categories: tree masters, fish masters, and game masters (Huanca 2008). The Tsimane’ believe that large trees, such as Ceiba pentandra (oba’) or Chorisia speciosa (vojshina), have their own guardian spirits (Huanca 2015), which are known by names such as O’ojpona and Uju. Similarly, fish also have their own guardian spirits. According to Tsimane’ mythology, fish availability is regulated by human interactions with two fish guardians: Idojore’ and O’pito’, the latter manifesting itself as a rainbow (Ellis 1996; Chicchón 1992; Díaz-Reviriego et al. 2017). Some of these spirits are benevolent to the Tsimane’, but some can also be antagonistic, and the Tsimane’ need to modify their behaviors when interacting with these guardians accordingly (Huanca 2008). In this chapter, we largely focus on supernatural gamekeepers (or game masters) who regulate game availability and hunting success, but as previously mentioned, we

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acknowledge the existence of other forest guardians (i.e., tree and fish masters) that have generally received less attention from anthropologists and ethnobiologists. Supernatural gamekeepers are believed to reside in hilly areas not inhabited by humans, their dwellings lying deep inside the hills (mucu’can). The Tsimane’ use the generic term Jäjäbä to refer to all animal guardians, although sometimes specific guardians are associated with certain animals and have other names. The Tsimane’ describe Jäjäbä as a cattle rancher. According to the Tsimane’, Jäjäbä owns a large corral with a well-guarded enclosure inside the hills. In this enclosure, Jäjäbä keeps, feeds, breeds, and herds wild animals (Fernández-Llamazares et al. 2017). A similar belief is held by the Mosetene, where supernatural gamekeepers also own large enclosures (Gambon and Rist 2019). Jäjäbä can allow animals to roam freely outside his corral by permitting them to exit through its doorway (known as chui’dye’). Traditionally, such exits are believed to be certain holes found in prominent rock outcrops in the forest. Jäjäbä frees his herds of animals in the forest with a shepherd, the jaguar (itsiquij), who guides the herds to sources of water and places where palm fruits are abundant. For the Tsimane’, game-keeping spirits are simultaneously generous and dangerous. The Tsimane’ stress that game masters are generally favorably disposed toward humans. Moreover, they are pleased if harvested meat is properly smoked, brought to households, and happily consumed by Tsimane’, with gratitude. Consequently, if not provoked, Jäjäbä will gladly allow a steady stream of game to exit from the aforementioned enclosure in order to be seen and hunted by humans. In their relations with the Tsimane’ people, game guardians enjoy being sung to and spoken to. They also enjoy receiving offerings of tobacco smoke. However, guardians are also easily angered by disrespectful behaviors, such as those that unnecessarily hurt animals or the excessive killing of a game (Ellis 1996). For example, odors emanating from uncleanliness (oc mo’), from menstrual blood, from male and female sexual fluids, or from the putrid decay of rotting flesh (human, fish, or animal) provoke Jäjäbä’s anger. An angry guardian might deprive the whole community of game by not releasing animals from his corral, but even more threatening, he might cast a spell on humans, bringing illness to the culprit or to her/his family, maybe even unto death (Ellis 1996; Huanca 2008). These guardians often employ numerous servants to actually cast their spells, typically sending harmful objects by way of sorcery ( farajtacdye’), in the form of projectiles (e.g., small arrows, stones, pieces of rotting wood, and thorns). According to Ellis (1996), the Tsimane’ believe that more illnesses and deaths result from anger and sorcery ( farajtacsi) originating from forest spirits than from illnesses and deaths caused by human-induced sorcery. Ethnographers have also documented the existence of guardians for specific animals. For example, Riester (1978) recorded chants devoted to lesser-known Tsimane’ gamekeepers such as Hebes, Kashivana, or Caya’di. Chicchón (1992) describes Cujij as being the guardian of birds and their eggs, while Huanca (2008) mentions Otyidye’, a female spirit that keeps various animals in a corral (namely monkeys) and who cautions the Tsimane’ against harming animals. Available information on these supernatural gamekeepers is limited at best, but ethnographic

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records suggest that these spirits were addressed following similar principles to those followed to propitiate Jäjäbä. For example, the ritual chants “To Kayadi” and “Kashivana: let the animals get out of your house,” documented by Jürgen Riester in the 1970s, highlight beliefs relating to supernatural gamekeepers similar to those relating to Jäjäbä (Riester 1978).

Communicating with Supernatural Gamekeepers Given the power and agency of supernatural gamekeepers, the Tsimane’ pay careful attention to the different ways in which they communicate with these beings. Indeed, the Tsimane’ can communicate with supernatural gamekeepers in different manners, such as through offerings of tobacco smoke (pu’shacsi) or through ritual singing ( ferentyé). However, it is important that they communicate gently and carefully with these animal guardians as well as with the animals themselves, navigating their way through a minefield of potential anger. A form of communicating with guardian spirits is pu’shacsi, which involves a series of supplications that are uttered while smoking tobacco. Supernatural gamekeepers are believed to enjoy tobacco smoke, for which the hunters make offerings of smoke while pleading with guardians. These rituals are often conducted at locations in the forest where the game masters are believed to reside (i.e., near prominent rock formations). Before going on a hunt, Tsimane’ foragers also vocalize songs explaining their need to harvest food in order to sustain their respective families. For example, in his compilation of Tsimane’ songs, in the 1970s, Jürgen Riester documented the traditional ritual chant “Free your peccaries!” in which the singer implores Jäjäbä to liberate some white-lipped peccaries from his corral so that the Tsimane’ can hunt and feed their families (Riester 1978). In such a way, every song becomes a ritual act in which the hunter provides game spirits with detailed information justifying their need to kill animals. Tsimane’ people understand that killing animals requires maintaining a reciprocal relationship, so they also communicate their gratitude to the master of animals through songs of gratitude (see Reyes-García and FernándezLlamazares 2019). For instance, the ritual song “She created us and is our light,” documented by Riester (1978), is intended to thank Hebes, another game master, for providing animals to hunt. Other forms of communicating with animals and their spirits include dreaming and the “calling” of the animals. Good hunters learn to almost perfectly mimic the calls of certain animals, and they employ these vocalizations not only to attract the animals themselves but also to seduce their supernatural gamekeepers. Animal guardians also make themselves visible, and they are encountered through dreams (Ellis 1996). The whereabouts of the game and the future fortunes of hunters are often revealed in dreams. Most mornings, usually huddled around the fire, families exchange details of the dreams experienced through the night, and such dreams are invariably acted upon. The contents of these dreams often form the basis upon which

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daily hunting plans and directions are decided. The importance of dreams in shaping the daily lives of Amazonian Indigenous People is well documented elsewhere (e.g., Descola 1989; Shepard 2002a). Finally, shamanic rituals also provided an opportunity to communicate with the forest guardians and to solicit them to reveal the whereabouts of certain animals (Ellis 1996), as well as to obtain explanations for unforeseen events (e.g., famine, wildlife scarcity), which the Tsimane’ often attribute to the anger of forest spirits (Fernández-Llamazares et al. 2017). Indeed, one of the most important roles of shamans was to mediate between hunters and supernatural gamekeepers (Jäjäbä, Caya’di, and Otyidye’). Most shamanic verses (cocojsi’ jimacdye’) are repetitive incantations delivered in a pleading tone where the shaman begs the game masters to render game visible, not to leave the preferred hunting grounds of the Tsimane’, and not to flee toward the open savannahs or deep inside the hills (Ellis 1996; Riester 1978; Reyes-García and Fernández-Llamazares 2019). Through chanting in the ritual house (or shípa), the shaman implored the game spirits to supply animals for the Tsimane’. The shaman would ask the animal’s master to provide animals for the families of his community and, at the same time, transmit the location along with an adequate supply of animals for hunters to harvest (Huanca 2008). This ritual act ensured the essential function of centralizing and distributing information about hunting grounds. Moreover, the shaman used to announce what specific hunting practices should be followed before, during, and after hunting (e.g., it was forbidden to hunt more than one spider monkey per hunting trip). Traditionally, Tsimane’ hunters believed that if they did not follow the shaman’s detailed proclamations, the game could become scarce. According to the words of an elder, “Jäjäbä would take all the animals from the forest” (Luz 2013: 22), and hunters or their families could suffer injury or fall ill (Fernández-Llamazares et al. 2017). The shaman was also in charge of transmitting the Tsimane’ gratitude to the spirits after a successful hunting trip by way of certain chants and ritual offerings. In the ritual house, the shaman would utter ritual chants accompanied by the offering of payments. The Tsimane’ would bring these offerings (e.g., tobacco, duck eggs) to the shaman, who would take them into the forest to be left at those specific locations where the supernatural spirits inhabited. Such offerings were dedicated to the animal guardians as a way of thanking them for having supplied wildlife, and this reinforced the alliance between human beings and the spirits. The Tsimane’ also provided fermented manioc beer (shocdye’) to the spirits as a token of their gratitude for the animals hunted. This specific offering was very important symbolically. Consumption of manioc beer is not only reserved for festive occasions and ceremonies but also forms part of the informal rituals of daily visits occurring among community members (Zycherman 2015). Thus, this particular offering highlights Tsimane’ cultural values of reciprocity, care, and conviviality with other lifeforms, as they treat them in the very same way in which they treat humans (i.e., symbolically offering them manioc beer).

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Building Respectful Relations with Supernatural Gamekeepers The Tsimane’ also have specific ways of relating to supernatural gamekeepers. Here, it is important to acknowledge that the Tsimane’ do not avoid animal masters, but rather, they take the utmost care to build respectful relationships with them (Ellis 1996). Ethnographers have documented many culturally-specific rules and rituals (micdyi, micdaqui, and mitactyi’) developed by the Tsimane’ to regulate their behavior in relation to wild animals protected by supernatural gamekeepers (Huanca 2008; Fernández-Llamazares et al. 2017). Some rules for maintaining good relations with supernatural gamekeepers are related to odor (Ellis 1996). Thus, a major concern when considering animal guardian “moods” is to avoid offending them with smell (poquedye’ or oc mo’), especially the odor emanating from putrefaction and/or bodily fluids. The smell that seeps from rotting animal and fish flesh is a cause for major concern. Thus, during hunting, it is important to make sure that no game escapes, dies, and subsequently rots in the forest (Ellis 1996). Therefore, for the Tsimane’, it is imperative that no injured animal escapes into the forest during a hunt. Thus, when raw meat cannot be consumed on the same day it is hunted, as is often the case during multiday hunting excursions, the meat is carefully prepared and smoked in the forest before it begins to rot. It is for this very reason that wives often accompany their husbands into the forest during prolonged hunting trips. While in the field, these wives will properly smoke the meat ( jaftaqui), thus avoiding incurring the wrath of supernatural gamekeepers. Once the meat is well smoked, it may be stored for several weeks among the rafters of a house without rotting. Similar beliefs are held in association with fish masters. Oral histories describe how the fish master I’dojore would warn the Tsimane’ during shamanic rituals with statements like “If you want fish, you must not fish too much nor throw away what you have fished” (Huanca 2015:347). Menstrual blood and sexual fluids are also said to possess strong odors, and game and fish guardians find these smells disturbing and, consequently, may inflict illness as punishment. Therefore, menstruating women follow strict isolation taboos and spend the days of their menses inside their respective homes, eating and drinking separately. Additionally, hunters must abstain from sex before hunting; otherwise, their ability to pursue and kill an animal would be diminished (Chicchón 1992). Other behaviors that help the Tsimane’ maintain harmonious relationships with supernatural gamekeepers and avoid potential hunting failures (va’sharaij) involve the treatment and disposal of the bones and skulls of harvested animals. Again, this behavior ensures that game guardians will not be angered. For example, animal bones must not be broken or given to hunting dogs; rather, they need to be kept safe and eventually returned to the forest (Huanca 2008). The Tsimane’ safely store the bones of the killed game in a bag made of palm leaves (ubu’), and eventually, these are returned to the forest. The bones are then deposited in the cavities of certain large trees, with the notion that these bones will be transformed into animals in the future. Oral tradition also relates the belief that by leaving the feet of an animal in the place

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where it was hunted, the Tsimane’ would be on good terms with the spirits inhabiting that specific place. Similarly, Chicchón (1992) reports that Tsimane’ leave the skulls of certain prey types, especially white-lipped peccaries (Tayassu pecari), at the places where they were hunted. Not doing so would upset the gamekeeper and result in strict punishments being meted out to the guilty hunter and his family. Some hunting taboos also regulate the time between hunting expeditions. According to Tsimane’ oral tradition, a hunter who kills a white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari) should practice micdyidye’ (i.e., a prohibition or restriction of certain daily practices, such as hunting or sexual intercourse) for 7 days if the harvested peccary is a male or 9 days if it is a female (Luz 2013). But if a man bags a tapir (Tapirus terrestris), this prohibition should last for up to 14 days. Pérez Diez (1983) asserts that Jäjäbä can assume the form of a tapir in the forest. If encountered, various restrictions are enacted so as to avoid harm from his shamanic power. However, Chicchón (1992) notes that restrictions on tapir harvesting also apply when a hunter’s relative dies, which is related to the human form that tapirs had in mythical times. In any case, as those taboos include, among other things, a temporary moratorium on hunting, they may have had an important effect on regulating game populations (Chicchón 1992). Moreover, on any given hunting trip, Tsimane’ foragers are supposed to capture only one single animal per certain species. This restriction does not apply to all species; rather, it only applies to some of the most vulnerable prey types, such as spider monkeys (Ateles chamek) and white-lipped peccaries (Tayassu pecari). Researchers argue that a direct consequence of such beliefs may be the prevention of overhunting (Luz et al. 2015, 2017). Ethnographers have also documented other Tsimane’ rituals geared toward maintaining harmonious relationships with supernatural gamekeepers. For instance, Ellis (1996) mentions the hunter’s responsibility to learn to shoot animals without inflicting excessive suffering and the ability of foragers to discern the presence of gamekeepers nearby. Chicchón (1992) also reports that Tsimane’, who hunt tapir or deer, cover their faces with the plant bi (Genipa americana) and another substance called faj (obtained from the pancreas of certain animals) as a way of concealing the identity of the hunter from the eyes of the game master. Finally, according to Huanca (2008), drinking fermented beer (shocdye’) and sharing meat with relatives after a successful hunt is pleasing to gamekeepers.

Changes in the Socio-Cosmology Around Supernatural Gamekeepers As far as we know, until very recently, most Tsimane’ adhered to many of the traditional ritual injunctions and practices associated with hunting (Reyes-García et al. 2014b). However, there is evidence that the Tsimane’ are increasingly adopting new modes of subsistence, and this is most certainly affecting their hunting practices and their associated belief systems (see Luz et al. 2015, 2017). This assertion finds

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support in recent studies of Tsimane’ social-ecological adaptations vis-a-vis their cosmological beliefs and spiritual practices. Many of these changes stem from the arrival of Evangelical missionaries to the region in the 1950s (Reyes-García et al. 2014a), the complete disappearance of shamans in the 1980s (Huanca 2008), increased access to modern hunting technology (Medinaceli and Quinlan 2018), and the reduction of game availability in the area, especially during the pelt commercialization boom (Herrera-MacBryde et al. 2000). As for other Indigenous groups across the Amazon (e.g., Luzar and Fragoso 2013), Tsimane’ shamanic rituals and their associated chants and supplications have been under direct assault from forced religious conversions. Since the 1950s, Catholic and Evangelical missionaries have had strong impacts on Tsimane’ spiritual traditions. Proselytization included concerted efforts aimed at diminishing the social status and authority of shamans, along with the replacement of many native rituals with Christian practices. For example, according to local oral tradition, most of the drums used in Tsimane’ shamanic rituals (e.g., ricarica, ponoj, mashaj, or coneij) were confiscated (or even deliberately destroyed) by missionaries (see Reyes-García and Fernández-Llamazares 2019). Missionaries also preached against the veneration of supernatural gamekeepers, as these beliefs were described as being demonic in nature (Huanca 2015). In fact, missionaries fiercely opposed shamans, not only because these ritual specialists were stewards of traditional culture and beliefs but also because of the social and spiritual influence they wielded among the Tsimane’ (Chicchón 1992). The last shaman passed away four decades ago. Notwithstanding, certain shaman descendants, assistants, and even some local elders continue to sporadically engage in healing rituals; however, their role as mediators between human beings and game spirits has been largely lost. Similarly, there was a significant reduction in the ceremonial use of manioc beer (shocdye’) following the arrival of Evangelical missionaries in the 1960s. These Protestants considered beer-drinking rituals demonic in nature, and thus, they forbade the Tsimane’ from engaging in such activities (Huanca 2008; Zycherman 2015). Therefore, the disappearance of shamans and the arrival and subsequent influence of missionaries largely undermined Tsimane’ traditional socio-cosmologies, including native beliefs and practices associated with hunting. As of today, many Tsimane’ bemoan the disappearance of shamans, because these ritual specialists were believed to have played a crucial role in increasing the availability of game (Fernández-Llamazares et al. 2017). In fact, the current decline in local wildlife is often attributed to the inability of the Tsimane’ to communicate with the spirits stemming from the disappearance of shamans (Ellis 1996; Huanca 1999; Huanca 2008). In the absence of shamans, some elders, particularly in villages further from San Borja (i.e., the main town in the region), continue to privately chant to the game spirits, petitioning for wild animals to hunt, but this practice is becoming increasingly rare (Fernández-Llamazares et al. 2017). As previously stated, there is a growing consensus among the Tsimane’ that the lines of communication with the spirits have weakened and that this trend has exacerbated the harmful effects stemming from the decline in local wildlife.

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Fig. 13.1 The Pa’tsene salt springs, located in the upper part of the Maniqui River, was one of the most important sacred sites on the Tsimane’ landscape. The original photograph was taken by Albert Hahn in 1952 (reproduced with permission from the Frobenius-Institut, Frankfurt am Main, Germany)

Changes in the way in which people relate to supernatural gamekeepers are also shaped by the physical world that the Tsimane’ now inhabit, including a largely depleted landscape. In fact, the 1970s’ pelt commercialization boom led to the decline of some of the most important prey species in Tsimane’ Territory, and this seems to have impacted the Tsimane’ cultural system. According to Huanca (2008), during this boom, the Tsimane’ started to consume species that were formerly culturally prohibited due to strict taboos. The hunting of capybara (Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris) provides an example. According to Tsimane’ oral tradition, the capybara was a person who possessed a powerful poison that could bewitch individuals. When Tsimane’ deities transformed this person into a capybara, the animal retained its shamanic powers, which is why traditionally, this animal was never consumed (Riester 1993). Presently, in many communities, this taboo has completely disappeared, and capybaras now form part of the Tsimane’ diet. Some informants attribute this dietary shift to wildlife scarcity. Additionally, over the last decades, some outsiders have deliberately destroyed some Tsimane’ sacred sites, such as the Pa’tsene salt springs located in the upper part of the Maniqui River (Hissink 1955; see Fig. 13.1). Oral histories speak of Pa’tsene as being a spiritually charged location associated with Dojity, one of the Tsimane’ gods that created the universe (Huanca 2008). The Tsimane’ myth of creation mentions that this is the place where Dojity’s wife gave birth to humanity, with the amniotic fluid turning into a salt spring. The site was demarcated by sacred

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Fig. 13.2 The Pa’tsene salt springs was marked by the presence of sacred petroplyphs. According to the Tsimane’ creation myth, this location was where Dojity’s wife gave birth to humanity. The original photograph was taken by Albert Hahn in 1952 (reproduced with permission from the Frobenius-Institut, Frankfurt am Main, Germany)

petroglyphs, which held important historical and sacred values for the Tsimane’ (Fig. 13.2). Such petroglyphs depicted vulvas, hooks, and anthropomorphic figures (Fig. 13.3; see also Hissink and Hahn 1989). These petroglyphs were part of a traditional route that was named Jeni-sii majmiji (which literally means Father’s Way; Daillant 1997). The vulva carvings indicated the exact place where Dojity’s wife had labored. Every time that the Tsimane’ visited this place, they thoroughly cleaned the rocks and drawings, believing that this would allow them to obtain plenty of salt from a nearby salt lick. As Huanca (2008) perceptively notes, “People going up the Pa’tsene had to observe muyejjoi’ (a strong cultural law) if they wanted to have salt.” The opening up of a logging road in 1996 completely destroyed the sacred and culturally important petroglyph sites (Daillant 1997). To the best of our knowledge, the only records available of the now destroyed petroglyphs are a set of original photographs taken by Albert Hahn in 1952 (three of which are reproduced in this chapter with permission from the Frobenius-Institut, Frankfurt am Main, Germany).

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Fig. 13.3 Anthropomorphic figures depicted in the sacred petroglyphs of Pa’tsene salt springs. The original photograph was taken by Albert Hahn in 1952 (reproduced with permission from the Frobenius-Institut, Frankfurt am Main, Germany)

In 1996, the representatives of the Gran Consejo Tsimane’ wrote a complaint letter to the National Director of Anthropology and Archaeology at the Vice-ministry of Culture, but this never had any response, and the perpetrators of the site destruction were never prosecuted (Strecker et al. 2015). The case represents a vivid example of how Indigenous values (e.g., holding certain sites as sacred, as well as other forms of spirituality) are often undermined and/or destroyed by expanding extractive land use policies (see Hinzo 2018; Panikkar and Tollefson 2018 for similar trends taking place among other Indigenous communities around the world).

Discussion In this last section, we discuss the potential environmental impacts of these changes and the importance of understanding socio-cosmologies involving supernatural gamekeepers as an example of the relational values (sensu Chan et al. 2016) that reflect alternative ways of conceptualizing human–nature interrelationships in all their complexity. For example, several authors claim that the loss and erosion of the cultural and spiritual values underpinning Tsimane’ wildlife stewardship are associated with increasingly unsustainable hunting practices (Luz et al. 2015, 2017). In fact, previous research on Amazonian customary hunting systems has shown that

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informal institutions, such as taboos and other cultural beliefs or norms regulating resource use, actually help to protect specific habitats and species. For example, Lu (2001) has shown that the Waorani from the Ecuadorian Amazon have communal beliefs about individual resource extraction along with an understanding of the relationship between hunting, common ownership, and social relations. The Matsigenka of the Peruvian Amazon seem to employ informal institutions to restrict the hunting of specific primates, such as howler monkeys (Alouatta seniculus) and spider monkeys (Ateles paniscus), during critically important reproductive seasons, thus enhancing their chances of survival (da Silva et al. 2005). Indeed, several researchers have shown that the erosion of traditional institutions often fosters non-sustainable hunting behaviors (e.g., Golden and Comaroff 2015; FernándezLlamazares et al. 2018). Particularly, research among the Tsimane’ suggests that hunters who strongly adhere to traditional hunting norms and taboos tend to harvest fewer vulnerable species (Luz 2013). These findings add to a growing body of evidence indicating that traditional beliefs and practices can influence hunting decisions, which may eventually foster sustainable game harvests (see FernándezLlamazares and Virtanen 2020). Indeed, many Tsimane’ express their concern that local defaunation results from animal masters who are angry about the intensification of hunting due to the increased use of shotguns and other modern weapons (Fernández-Llamazares et al. 2017). While some Tsimane’ feel that violating traditional game taboo rules is justified because of the pressing need to obtain food, others express concern that these violations could undermine the reciprocal relationship established between the Tsimane’ and supernatural gamekeepers. Most Tsimane’ elders who adhere to many of the traditional norms regulating hunting behavior attribute the current unavailability of the game to the diminished respect demonstrated toward animals and their guardian spirits, particularly on the part of the younger generation. Amazonian Indigenous groups often find themselves at odds with conservationists, and such differences are largely ontological (see Blaser 2009 for an interesting example from Paraguay). Hirtzel (2007) discusses how conservationists operating in Bolivian Amazonia often attribute defaunation to non-sustainable hunting practices (e.g., commercial hunting). However, local Indigenous communities attribute wildlife declines to angered animal masters. It is believed that hunters are being punished for failing to show proper respect to supernatural gamekeepers. Similarly, for many Tsimane’ elders, defaunation is a result of the displeasure of animal guardians over the use of firearms by younger generations (Fernández-Llamazares et al. 2017). Similarly, among the Matsigenka, local faunal extinctions are said to be the result of animal masters becoming upset over too much killing (Shepard 2002b). In this, sense, supernatural gamekeepers provide a crystal-clear example of the importance of relational values in wildlife stewardship. Among the Tsimane’, for example, such a view is expressed not only in relation to the game but also to fish. Indeed, Tsimane’ fish masters provide us with an interesting illustration of the environmental impact of this socio-cosmology. O’pito’ is a harmful spirit who controls and monopolizes fish resources, causing fear and distrust amongst the Tsimane’ (Chicchón 1992). Moreover, O’pito’ is also responsible for overseeing

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the periodic movements of migratory fish along rivers (Huanca 2015). Like Jäjäbä, O’pito’ has the power to bewitch people if they disobey his rules, particularly when he transports his fish upriver. Because of O’pito’s terrifying powers, the Tsimane’ are afraid to fish in excess during fish migrations occurring at locations upriver. Our interpretation of the myth is that the portrayal of O’pito’ as a frightening spirit reflects the importance of allowing migratory fish to move unimpeded through waterways so as to maintain healthy fish populations, thus preventing fish stock declines.

Conclusion This work highlights the breadth and depth of cultural protocols, rules, and rituals used to regulate Tsimane’ relations with supernatural gamekeepers, including the crucial role that shamans used to occupy as mediators between humans and spirits. It also illustrates how the deep bonds of reciprocity established between Indigenous communities and game masters reflect kinship-oriented philosophies, manifested through complex webs of relationships and a powerful stewardship ethos. However, this sophisticated socio-cosmology is eroding rapidly, with potential conservation implications for the largest tropical rainforest on our planet. Given that many Indigenous communities believe that natural and supernatural factors control, to a large extent, the relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world, they often associate their own concepts of defaunation with rewards and retributions from supernatural gamekeepers. Understanding the different ways in which different cultural groups relate to the environment can offer innovative approaches to address the current social-ecological challenges that we are facing. Acknowledgments We thank the Tsimane’ people for opening the doors of their lifeways and worldviews to us over more than three decades. Over the years, our work among the Tsimane’ has been funded by different grants from the US National Science Foundation and the European Research Council. Our research adheres to the Code of Ethics of the International Society of Ethnobiology and has also received ethical clearance from different institutions over the years, particularly the approval of the ethics committee of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (CEEAH-04102010). We have always engaged in processes of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent at the beginning of all our research projects among the Tsimane’, obtaining permission from the Great Tsimane’ Council to undertake our work. ÁFLl is funded by a Ramón y Cajal research grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (RYC2021-034198-I). VR is currently funded through the European Research Council under an ERC Consolidator Grant (FP7-771056LICCI). This work contributes to the “María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence” (CEX2019-000940M). We thank the Frobenius-Institut, Frankfurt am Main (Germany), for authorizing the use of the original images of Albert Hahn in Figs. 13.1–13.3.

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Dr. Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares is an ethnobiologist at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) in Spain. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork among the Tsimane’ of Bolivia, and the Daasanach of Kenya. His research interests include knowledge systems of Indigenous Peoples, the relationship between biological and cultural diversity, along with biocultural approaches to conservation. Dr. Tomás L. Huanca is a cultural anthropologist at the Bolivian Center for Research and Integral Social Development (CBIDSI). He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork on the Aymara in the Bolivian Highlands and with the Tsimane’ of Bolivian Amazonia. His research interests include the native peoples of the Andes and Amazonia, the use of oral history to approach ethnoscience, natural resource utilization, biodiversity, sustainability, traditional medicine, myths, belief systems, and culture change. Prof. Victoria Reyes-García is a cultural anthropologist working for ICREA at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) in Spain. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork among the Tsimane’ of Bolivia since 1999. Her research focuses on Indigenous and local knowledge systems, particularly in relation to the natural environment, and on the ability of these knowledge systems to understand and deal with climate and environmental crises.

Chapter 14

Supernatural Gamekeepers/Animal Masters Among the Munduruku (Wuy Jugu), Tukano, Embera and Achuar (Shiwiar) of the Neotropics Richard J. Chacon

Abstract This chapter investigates the belief in Supernatural Gamekeepers/Animal Masters of wildlife among the Munduruku (Wuy Jugu) of Brazil, Tukano of Colombia, Embera of Colombia and Achuar (Shiwiar) of Ecuador. Findings show that Supernatural Gamekeepers/Animal Masters are believed to grant success to hunters who adhere to prescribed restrictions. Specifically, among the Munduruku (Wuy Jugu), human trophy heads were believed to be pleasing to game spirits who, in turn, would promote the fertility of local wildlife and make them more vulnerable to hunting. For the Tukano, local petroglyphs and pictographs are believed to be the abode of the Master of Animals. At such rock art locations, Tukano shamans relay hunters’ petitions to this supernatural being who grants success to foragers who do not exceed their allotted bag limits. Likewise, among the Embera, shamans mediate between hunters and the Supernatural Gamekeeper who grants success to those who refrain from harvesting in designated “no take” zones. Among the Achuar, a Supernatural Gamekeeper named Amasan grants hunters success as long as they take only what is needed. The belief in the existence of Supernatural Gamekeepers/ Animal Masters constitutes a form of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) because such a belief affects foraging patterns. In fact, findings indicate that belief in Supernatural Gamekeepers/Animal Masters restricts hunting, thus reducing hunting pressure on local prey species. However, as socioeconomic and demographic conditions change in the Neotropics, continued belief in Supernatural Gamekeepers/ Animal Masters may actually facilitate the overharvesting of wildlife by native peoples.

R. J. Chacon (✉) Department of Sociology, Criminology, and Anthropology, Winthrop University, Rock Hill, SC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. J. Chacon (ed.), The History and Environmental Impacts of Hunting Deities, Conflict, Environment, and Social Complexity 4, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37503-3_14

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R. J. Chacon

Keywords Supernatural Gamekeepers · Animal Masters · Munduruku · Tukano · Embera · Achuar · Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) · Conservation · Rock art · Hunting

Introduction The claim that indigenous peoples are innate conservationists who maintain harmonious relationships with their respective environments is often embraced by academics, and this notion is frequently celebrated in popular culture (see Chacon and Mendoza 2012).1 The idea that traditional native peoples are unwavering stewards of nature is summarized by Collier (1947:173) who claims that Amerindian “societies existed in perfect ecological balance with the forest, the plain, the desert, the waters, and the animal life.” Along these lines, it is often argued that indigenous peoples procured wildlife in such a manner that prevented them from overhunting locally available game (Collier 1947; Hughes 1983; Nelson 1983; Speck 1913, 1939a, b). Additionally, some academics and political leaders regard native patterns of natural resource utilization as culturally and morally superior to Western patterns of resource use. For example, Ritche (1956:27) stated that “in sharp contrast to the white man’s way,. . .the Indian trod lightly through his natural environment, merging himself sympathetically into the world of living and non-living things.” Hughes (1983:4) echoed this sentiment by insisting that: “[a]n Indian took pride in not making a mark on the land, but on leaving as few marks as possible: in walking through the forest without breaking branches, in building a fire that made as little smoke as possible, in killing one deer without disturbing the others.” According to Wallace Ney (1977:4), “. . .the Indian was an instinctive environmentalist, even during the most complex and developed [Amerindian] cultures, as in Central and South America, living in harmony with nature as part of his faith.” Hughes (1983) also claims that the large-scale Mesoamerican and Andean societies created little environmental disturbances. Likewise, former US Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall (1963:24) holds that “the Indians were, in truth, the pioneer ecologists of this country.” United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1994:13) similarly posits that “[i]t is now clearly understood that many indigenous peoples live in greater harmony with the natural environment than do inhabitants of the industrialized consumer societies.” Many Native American scholars support this position. For example, Lee (1959:163) states that “[t]he white people never cared for land, deer or bear. When we Indians kill meat, we eat it all up. When we dig roots, we make little holes. . .We shake down acorns and pine nuts. We don’t chop down trees. We only use dead wood. But the white people plow up the ground, pull up the trees, kill

According to Alvard (1995a:790), “. . .conservation can be defined as subsistence decisions that are costly to the actor in the short-term but aimed at increasing the sustainability of the harvest in the long-term.”

1

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everything. . .How can the spirit of the earth like the white man?...Everywhere the white man has touched it, it is sore.” According to the late American Indian (Sioux) scholar, Vine Deloria, Jr., “We Indians have a more human philosophy of life. We Indians will show this country how to act human” (Deloria cited in McLuhan 1971:159). Some academics have gone so far as to argue that native peoples hold the only hope remaining for humanity. For example, Collier (1947:28) asserted that “. . .the Indian record is the bearer of one great message to the world. Through his society, and only through his society, man experiences greatness;. . .and through it, he is freed from all fear.” Moreover, Deloria (1970:186) concludes that “[t]he only answer [to the current environmental crisis] will be to adopt Indian ways to survive. For the white man to exist, he must adopt a total Indian way of life.” Contrastingly, several scholars have challenged such characterizations of native peoples existing in unwavering harmony with nature by showing that indigenous peoples are fully capable of causing environmental degradation (see Alvard 1993, 1994, 1995a, Chacon 2001, 2012; Chacon and Mendoza 2012; Hames 1987; Krech 1999; Redford 1991). However, these same scholars also readily acknowledge the fact that native groups possess valuable knowledge of their respective environments.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge Some scholars argue that native peoples were able to exist in ecological harmony by harvesting local wildlife at sustainable rates because of their adherence to a conservation ethic borne of traditional knowledge (Bettinger 1976; Booth and Jacobs 1990; Nelson 1983; Repetto and Holmes 1983; Speck 1913, 1939a, b; Stoffle 2005). From here on, this indigenous traditional knowledge about the environment will be referred to as Traditional Ecological Knowledge or (TEK). This knowledge is the product of having observed nature over the span of many generations (Berkes 1993; Krech 2004). For example, the great value of TEK can be seen in the following incident involving the Canadian Inuit and bowhead whales: “Scientific surveys conducted in 1977, at the behest of the Canadian government, concluded that the bowhead whale population was seriously depleted in the Beaufort Sea. There were, according to the official count, about 800 remaining in the area. A hunting moratorium was proposed. Since the survey was conducted from the air, the Inuit pointed out, only animals swimming near the surface, in open water, could be counted. The bowhead, they observed were able to swim for long periods under the ice flows where they could not be counted from the air. There were, they contended, closer to seven thousand whales in the Beaufort. In 1991 a new census, using techniques that acknowledged Inuit observations [i.e. Inuit TEK], found that despite an annual harvest of between twenty and forty whales a year, the total population was stable at close to eight thousand” (Dowie 2009:112).

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Supernatural Gamekeepers/Animal Masters Most importantly, TEK is often transmitted and supported by way of native charter myths and beliefs. An expression of TEK is the belief in the existence of supernatural gamekeepers/animal masters. According to Slotten (1965:293), “[t]he central idea is that culturally important animals have their own supernatural ruler. That deity is a protector of animals and offers them to or withholds them from human hunters. It is believed that game animals cannot be killed without the permission of this deity and that animals are in fact immortals themselves, able to regenerate and return in renewed bodies after their death. It is the Animal Master that was the agent responsible for the regeneration of the animals and facilitated their reintroduction into the human world from their underworld homes.” The belief in supernatural gamekeepers is widespread in the Neotropics (Fernández-Llamazares and Virtanen 2020). For example, a belief in an animal master is found among the Lake Atitlan Maya (Emery and Brown 2012), Bribri and Cabécar (Palmer et al. 1993), Kuna (Ventocilla et al. 1996), Arawete’ (Viveiros de Castro 1992), Makuna (Århem 2003), Runa (Kohn 2007), Matsigenka (Daly and Shepard 2019); Siona-Secoya (Vickers 1994), Yagua (Chaumeil 2010), Yanomamö (Kopenawa and Albert 2013), Apuriña (Virtanen 2017), Tsimane’ (Fernández-Llemazares et al. 2017), Mostene (Gambon and Rist 2019) and many other groups. As will be reported below, “[s]hamanic rituals provide an opportunity to communicate with game masters, get first-hand information from non-human agencies, and establish reciprocal relationships with them. . .Through chanting, shamans often implore the spirits to facilitate the hunt or show gratitude after a successful hunting trip. . .Many of these ritual songs illustrate the powerful bonds of reciprocity that Amazonian Indigenous peoples have traditionally maintained with game masters and help to cultivate a philosophy of wildlife stewardship. . .” (FernándezLlamazares and Virtanen 2020:24). Among the Makuna of Colombia, “[m]en supply the Spirit Owners of the animals with “spirit foods” (coca, snuff and burning bees wax). In return, the spirits allocate game animals and fish to human beings. This exchange, mediated by shamans, involves three different sets of relationships: between men and spirits (shamans and Spirit Owners); between spirits and animals (Spirit Owner and his protégé animals); and between men and animals (the human hunter and his prey)” (Århem 2003:192). Some argue that adherence to this belief in the existence of supernatural gamekeepers/animal masters (a form of TEK) prevents native hunters from overharvesting wild game (Pierotti 2011). In fact, McDonald (1977:734) holds that native beliefs (i.e., forms of TEK) that regulated the number and/or types of animals harvested functioned as a type of “primitive environmental protection agency” designed to conserve wildlife, thus preserving the native group’s harmonious relationship with the environment. According to Reichel-Dolmatoff (1976:308), Tukano cosmologies along with the presence of myths such as that of a supernatural gamekeeper, “together with the ritual behaviour derived from them, represent in all respects a set of ecological principles and that these formulate a system of social and economic

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rules that have a highly adaptive value in the continuous endeavour to maintain a viable equilibrium between the resources of the environment and the demands of society.” Along these lines, Århem (2003:200) argues that Makuna “[m]yths, in effect, are plans for land use-and extremely efficient ones since they are at once ecologically informed, emotionally charged and morally binding. In all, the Makuna mode of livelihood amounts to a complex but efficient system of resource management, a cosmology turned into ecology.” However, many well-documented cases of native peoples overharvesting game (such as occurred during the North American Fur Trade) are known to exist, and so how are these nonconforming instances explained by those who characterize native peoples as unwavering stewards of nature? The answer is that cases of Amerindianinduced environmental degradation are often attributed to the loss of traditional Amerindian environmental beliefs or TEK (see Martin 1978). For example, according to Martin (1978:52), the introduction of Western disease along with the arrival of a new ideology (i.e., Christianity) caused many native people to “apostatize” (renounce TEK) during the Fur Trade. In short, Martin (1978) argues that the overharvesting of local game by native hunters during the Fur Trade was attributable to their loss of faith in TEK. In response to reports of Amerindian-induced environmental degradation, Alcorn (1995:803) attributes these cases to the effects of contact with outsiders which resulted in “drastic organizational changes and fragmentation of cultural based knowledge.” Along these lines, Ranco (2007) states that cases involving Amerindian-induced environmental degradation are linked to colonial or modern capitalistic impositions. 2 In this chapter, I provide an overview of how beliefs in supernatural gamekeepers/animal masters (a form of TEK) manifests itself among the Munduruku (Wuy Jugu), Tukano, Embera and Achuar (Shiwiar) of the Neotropics. I also examine whether or not the adherence to a belief in supernatural gamekeepers/ animal masters actually prevents the overharvesting of local game by Achuar subsistence hunters residing in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Munduruku of Brazil For the Munduruku (Wuy Jugu), each species of wildlife is believed to have a supernatural gamekeeper/animal master or “spirit mother” who protects the animals and insures their regeneration. “There is also a spirit mother of all game animals, serving as a symbol of the essential unity of the game and a principal intermediary between man and nature” (Murphy and Murphy 1974:82). “If offense is given to these supernaturals through such means as killing an animal for its hide and leaving the carcass to rot, they take swift revenge against the guilty party. This is usually

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Buege (1996) also blames Euro-American colonialism for the loss of traditional Amerindian conservationist practices.

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done by supernaturally bringing injury upon the culprit. But the spirit “mothers” can also be benevolent and helpful to the community and make game abundant, if humans observe proper relations with them” (Murphy 1960:132). Contrastingly, “[k]illing more animals than the village can eat or killing them only for their hides is a serious offense against the spirits and can invite snake bites and other accidents or cause the loss of one’s soul” (Murphy and Murphy 1974:82). The following demonstrates a link between warfare, status, hunting and fertility among the Munduruku. According to Murphy and Murphy (1974:80), “[t]he taker of the trophy head,. . .occupied the most honored rank in Mundurucú society.” In addition, “[o]ne of the principal values of a trophy head was its beneficial effect upon the spirits of the game animals. Informants stated that. . .it simply ‘pleased’ the game spirits and thereby promoted fertility of the animals and made them more vulnerable to hunting. It was customary for the Dajeboisi [the taker of the head] to take the head out into the forest with hunting parties and wait while the charm of the trophy was felt by the game. He would not hunt himself, but his companions would in a short time kill all the game that the village needed. . .” (Murphy and Murphy 1974:81).

Tukano of Colombia For the Tukano of Colombia, all wild animals are subject to the Master of Animals who guards his flock consisting of deer, tapir, peccary, agouti, paca, monkeys and all other prey types that are a commonly hunted for food. “In order to obtain the supernatural Master’s permission to kill a game animal, the prospective hunter must undergo a rigorous preparation which consists of sexual continence, food restrictions, and purification rites ensuring cleansing the body by bathing and emetics” (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1976:312). For the Tukano, the Master of Animals is known as Vaí-mahsë (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971:80). Certain prominent rock formations that are full of caverns exist in Tukano territory and these locations are believed to be the dwellings where, “surrounded by his animals, he [Vaí-mahsë] dominates the forest. The rapids of the rivers, where the torrents pass between huge rocks and form deep whirlpools, are the dwelling places of Vaí-mahsë as protector of fish. Both places are imaged as large malocas [dwellings] regardless of whether they are in the hills or under water; there the creatures live and from hence they go forth to the forest or to the river” (ReichelDolmatoff 1971:81). These caverns are believed to be portals to the interior where Vaí-mahsë keeps his deer, tapirs, peccaries, monkeys, rodents and many other wild animals. “Only a hunter in a state of ritual purity, aided by the invocations of a payé [shaman], dares to go near a hill to obtain these precious gifts with impunity and without incurring the malediction of Vaí-mahsë” (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971:81–82). In fact, men fear that Vaí-mahsë will severely punish them if they do not fulfill in detail the many rituals required before going on a hunt. Moreover, “[t]he hunter may kill only certain game animals and only on specified occasions; if he does not do this,

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Vaí-mahsë takes revenge by sending illness or dangerous animals” (ReichelDolmatoff 1971:85) or Vaí-mahsë “can punish a hunter who did not ask his permission before hunting or who omitted some of the rules that he should observe before killing an animal” (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971:176). In short, “[i]llness or misfortune in hunting are almost always attributed to neglect of any of the numerous rules a hunter has to observe” (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1976:313). 3 For the Tukano, certain rock art panels are associated with a supernatural gamekeeper/animal master as is made clear in the following statements: “But sometimes payés go into the forest,. . .to affirm their requests and to foster the fertility of animals. On many of the hills today the rock walls are covered with pictographs representing various animals and fertility symbols, where generations of payés have drawn, in red, yellow or black, the forms of game animals. The drawings show deer, tapirs, monkeys, turtles, and birds, together with phallic and uterine symbols. . .” (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971:82–83). According to Reichel-Dolmatoff (1971:83), “[t]hese rock paintings or engravings are not vestiges of ‘mysterious civilizations’ as some authors have it, but simply places supposed to be the dwellings of the Master of Animals, whether in the forest or river.”

Embera of Colombia Traditional Embera believe that every large game species has a “mother” or wuandra and, by way of certain chants, a jaibaná (shaman) invites this supernatural being to grant a hunter success while foraging (Mauricio Pardo, personal communication, 2018). According to Ulloa et al. (2004:27), “[c]ontrol of animals by the jaibaná occurs when the jaibaná interacts with the mother of the species in order to lock up the white-lipped peccary in the underworld or to uncover the underworld to release the white-lipped peccary. This control causes the abundance of game animals to increase or decrease.” To this end, a jaibaná decorates his body and utters various chants (while holding wooden “chanting staffs”) so that a wuandra will allow animals to be taken by a hunter (Astrid Ulloa, personal communication, 2018). A jaibaná always chants holding all of the wooden “chanting staffs” he possesses. “In the tropical rainforest, such staffs are made from the oquendo tree (Dalbergia retusa) that is a particularly hard and dense wood. This tree is known by other names such as cocobolo and marequende. Chanting staffs represent and are manifestations of shamanic power. In the eyes of the Embera, the more staffs a jaibaná holds while chanting, the more spirits are under his control--he has more spirit allies” (Mauricio Pardo, personal communication, 2018).4

3 Keyser and Whitley correctly point out the important relationship that exists between Amerindian rock art and shamanism by noting that at pictograph sites, Tukano shamans interact with the Master of the Game by way of various rituals and such ritual activity is “intended to guarantee successful hunts by tribal members. . .” (2006:4–5).

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The Embera believe that the failure to heed the directives issued by a jaibaná will result in serious repercussions. For example, a jaibaná may declare certain patches of forest, off limits to hunting and he may base his decision on whether or not to hunt in a certain area, on a dream. The Embera believe that if a hunter were to transgress such a directive, the wuandra would punish the individual through sickness, by getting lost in the forest, or even with death (Astrid Ulloa, personal communication, 2018). Additionally, an angry wuandra may direct its wrath against an entire community by causing game local shortages. Traditionally, the Embera do not understand the concept of local game depletion and/or local extinction. Instead, the absence of certain species in a specified region is interpreted as a refusal on the part of wuandra to release selected species from below ground (Astrid Ulloa, personal communication, 2018). As stated by Ulloa et al. (2004:17), “[t]heir culture does not contain the concept of biological extinction, and they [the Embera] believe that the jaibaná hides away the animals either as punishment for overhunting by humans or out of malice.” The following declarations further illustrate this traditional belief: “When I [Mauricio Pardo] went to live with the Embera for the first time, in 1980, the elders attributed the disappearance of large game to shamanic wickedness” (Mauricio Pardo, personal communication, 2018). “Malevolent jaibaná are believed to be able to bring harm to a community by hiding local game underground where hunters cannot gain access to these sequestered animals” (Astrid Ulloa, personal communication, 2018). Thus, traditional Embera believe that the disappearance of species from their territory is caused by the actions of certain malevolent jaibaná” (Ulloa et al. 2004). The Embera not only believe that an angry jaibaná can harm entire communities, but they also believe that individuals may be targeted as is indicated by the following statements: “By way of certain chants, a jaibaná could hinder an individual hunter’s subsistence efforts. In fact, it is said, that a jaibaná can dañar la mano del cazador (“damage the hunter’s hand”) that is to say, a jaibaná has the ability to ruin a hunter’s luck though the utterance of specific chants” (Mauricio Pardo, personal communication, 2018). 5 Utría National Park was created in 1987 and this reserve had a population of 600 Embera living within the park’s borders (Ulloa et al. 2004). Biologists working in the park noted a decline in Brocket deer, howler, spider, white-faced capuchin monkeys, near disappearance of white-lipped peccaries and the local extinction of tapirs. Much to the park administration’s credit, the Embera were not ejected from the reserve because of these disturbing trends. Instead, with consensus building in mind, park officials, biologists and cultural anthropologists established a task force 4 The Embera believe that these chanting staffs can also be used to cause sickness but no Embera would ever publically admit to engaging this type of ritual activity because many jaibanás have been killed as they were believed to have caused sickness (particularly if children had died) (Mauricio Pardo, personal communication, 2018). 5 Conversely, the Embera believe that a jaibaná can cure a hunter’s “damaged hand” by way of specific chants but this act of curing is conducted with the help of other spirits (not wuandras) (Mauricio Pardo, personal communication, 2018).

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that included a number of Embera representatives. The goal of this multidisciplinary entity was to foment sustainable hunting practices among the Embera. It is important to note that this body respectfully consulted and worked with local jaibaná in an attempt to reverse the decline in local wild game (Ulloa et al. 2004). 6 Presently, it appears to be the case that most large game species in the park have become depleted. Sadly, since the park is understaffed and underfunded, attempts at establishing sustainable hunting practices among the Embera inhabiting the park have failed (Mauricio Pardo, personal communication, 2018).

Achuar (Shiwiar) of Ecuador The Achuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon believe that if a hunter wishes to be successful, he must maintain a good relationship with the guardian sprit of wild game and this principle “is more or less, openly at work in all Amerindian hunting societies” (Descola 1996a:257). Such guardian spirits “. . .are seen as exercising the same kind of control over game as the Achuar exercise over their own children and domestic animals” (Descola 1996a:257). For the Achuar of the village of Alto Corrientes, the guardian spirit or “owner of game” is Amasan who is said to love the Achuar, and it is he who sees how individuals suffer while hunting. Amasan asks that individuals take only what they need from the forest (that is to say, hunters should never kill more animals than necessary). Additionally, Amasan insists that hunters be respectful of wild game (see below for how the Achuar demonstrate respect for prey species). Amasan is said to travel throughout the forest, jumping from tree to tree with his magical blowgun. When he sees a hunter in the forest who has taken only what was needed and who has treated game with respect, Amasan takes pity on this man and he will proceed to shoot a wild animal with his magical blowgun. This act will allow the worthy hunter to make a kill while foraging. The Achuar believe that Amasan never misses when he shoots an animal with his magical blowgun. However, if an Achuar hunter has killed more animals than necessary and/or if he has been disrespectful of game, Amasan will grow angry with this individual and the unworthy hunter will be unable to bag any prey whatsoever as punishment. The Achuar hold that hunters should always exercise restraint when foraging. For example, if an individual were to come across a troop of monkeys, it would be acceptable to shoot one, two or three monkeys with a blowgun, but no more. Another

6

This decline may stem from Embera overhunting only in part. Additional pressures on local game were made worse by the fact that the reserve was relatively small to begin with and the decades long actions of paramilitary groups operating in the region likely contributed to the decline in game (Astrid Ulloa personal communication, 2018). Moreover, the situation was exacerbated by the numerous illegal extractive activities (such as timber harvesting, mining, gold prospecting employing mercury) that were occuring in the region (Mauricio Pardo, personal communication, 2018).

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example of restraint can be seen in the following directive: If after killing a sufficient amount, the remaining monkeys in a troop were to start scurrying down a treetop, a hunter should not try to kill these fleeing individuals because the Achuar believe that these monkeys are attempting to “return to their owner” (i.e., Amasan). The Achuar hold that Amasan keeps wild game in a large hole in the ground and that is where they regenerate. If an Achuar hunter were to give chase to scampering monkeys that were trying to return to “their owner,” Amasan would grow angry at this greedy individual and he would punish this hunter by causing it to grow dark very suddenly and by sending very strong gusts of wind in his direction. This will disorient the overly enthusiastic hunter who will become lost and may even perish because of his failure to abide by Amasan’s rules. This is why the Achuar state that one should never attempt to kill all the monkeys in a troop. The same holds true for collared peccaries. It is acceptable for a hunter to take a few of these animals but he should never be greedy by trying to kill a large number of collared peccaries or he may become lost in the forest as punishment. Amasan is particularly stern with individuals who are disrespectful of wildlife (especially these who mock monkeys) and he punishes them by way of the Jurijuri spirits that devour transgressors.7 This message is conveyed in a myth that tells of a village that was destroyed and consumed by Jurijuri spirits after several brash young men failed to follow Amasan’s rules. On July 21, 1993, I recorded this myth from an Achuar hunter named Kaísar who resides in the village of Alto Corrientes (see Fig. 14.1).

Amasan and the Jurijuri Long ago, some young hunters returned to their village after having killed several monkeys. One of the killed female monkeys had a live baby monkey clinging to it and so the youths took the baby from its dead mother and started to make fun of it. They laughed at the baby monkey saying: “Look at how little hair it has and look at its face. . .it looks like an old man’s face.” An elder woman told the youths to stop behaving in such a way and warned them that if they did not stop, the Jurijuri would eat them. The youths dismissed the old woman’s warnings by stating, “That is foolishness” and that night, the young men had sex with their wives and they took off hunting the next morning. While the young hunters where in the forest, Amasan and the Jurijuri came to the village where these events had taken place. Amasan, who was carrying a wambo (magical cane), said the following to the old woman: “If you wish to live, you must leave.” Then Amasan dipped his wambo into the old woman’s muits (a large ceramic vessel filled with chicha beverage) and warned her not to drink this liquid. Then, Amasan told the old woman to find a large hole in which to hide. He also instructed her to cover the hole with branches and a

7

Despite the fact that the Achuar of Alto Corrientes are currently being targeted for conversion to Christianity by evangelical missionaries who are active in this remote part of the Ecuadorian Amazon, without exception, every Alto Corrientes hunter interviewed acknowledged belief in the existence of Amasan and claimed to adhere to the precepts put forth by this supernatural gamekeeper.

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Fig. 14.1 Achuar subsistence hunter named Kaísar (photo by R. Chacon)

termite nest so that no one could find her because today, said Amasan, “all of this will soon come to an end.” Upon hearing this, the old woman became very afraid. When the young hunters returned from the forest, the frightened woman told the men about what had just happened but neither they nor her husband believed her. They dismissed her warning by telling her that, “That man you described to us is probably your lover!” Despite having been warned not drink from the muits, the young hunters and the husband drank large amounts of chicha, became drunk and fell into a very deep sleep. That night, noises from the approaching Jurijuri were heard: “juri, juri, juri.” When the woman heard these noises, she tried to wake the men up but they remained in a deep sleep. They had drunk from the muits that Amasan had dipped his wambo (magical cane). In an effort to awaken her husband, the old woman pulled out a log that was only partially in the fire pit and placed the red-hot tip of this log on her husband’s toe but he did not awaken. The woman started to see that the glowing eyes of the Jujrijuri were getting closer and closer to the village and so she fled and hid in a large hole and covered herself with some branches and a termite nest just like Amasan had told her to do so and she was saved. After a while, she came out of the hole to see what had happened and the Jurijuri had devoured the entire village, even the huts. Everything was eaten and licked clean. After having eaten everything, the Jurijuri set off for their home village and they formed a trail by eating their way through the jungle because their teeth were as sharp as machetes. The old woman tracked the Jurijuri by following the trail that they had just cleared and when she arrived at the location where they lived she saw that they lived in a very large hole at the base of a dead hollow tree. She heard all sorts of noises coming from inside the hole such as people laughing, children crying and other sounds typical of village life. Having heard this, the old woman fled to her kinfolk in order to tell them what had happened and to let them know where the Jurjuri village was located. She told her kinsfolk “My brothers and my husband have been killed.” Then, her relatives wanting revenge, gathered together, armed with their shotguns and chili pepper powder, took off for the village of the Jurijuri with the old woman as their guide.

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As the old woman’s kinsmen came close to the village of the Jurijuri, they heard people laughing, children crying and other sounds typical of village life coming from the large hole at the base of a dead tree. Then, the old woman’s kinsmen silently lit the tree on fire and threw smoldering chili pepper powder in the large hole at the base of the dead tree. Soon, they heard lots of people coughing and many children crying and soon the Jurijuri began fleeing from the hole. The old woman’s kinsmen waited for the Jurijuri and killed them one by one, as they tried to escape from the hole. One individual jumped from the hole onto a tree branch with his blowgun and escaped. . .This was Amasan. Out of this same hole, a young and beautiful female Jurijuri also emerged but the old woman’s kinsmen spared her. They took her back to their village where she was taken as a wife by one of the old women’s relatives and the villagers taught the female Jurijuri how to live among them. A short while afterward, this young Jurijuri woman would accompany her husband when he would go hunting. When her husband would kill a bird, he would hand it to her for her to carry it home. However, when the couple arrived home, the bird that the husband killed had simply disappeared and the Jurijuri young woman would tell her husband that she was not hungry. . .This happened three times. In reality, each time, she had eaten the birds raw. While the Jurijuri young woman slept, her husband pulled back his wife’s hair and noticed that she had teeth on the back of her head. During the day, she used her hair to keep this set of teeth covered. Her teeth were so sharp that a person could cut themselves by merely touching them. The next day, the couple went hunting again but this time, the husband did not give any birds to his Jurijuri wife. Since she was very hungry, while alone in the forest, she attacked her husband from behind and killed him. She then ate his entire body except for the head. Since the couple did not return from the hunt, the husband’s kinfolk went searching for them and when they found the head of their kinsmen they said, “The Jurijuri woman has eaten her husband.” The young Jurijuri woman fled the area and after a while, she met up with Amasan and they had many children and this is why they are so many Jurijuri today. The dead husband’s relatives retuned to where they had burned the large dead tree. There, they found many yui (a type of gourd) and this is why yui is also called Jurijuri moke (Jurijuri head). This is why the elders warned to never make fun of monkeys. The Jurijuri are still alive and they live underground in deep holes and this is why when monkeys are pursued, they flee from the treetops down to the ground toward their owner Amasan. A hunter who pursues such fleeing monkeys may fall in a large hole, may get lost or he may die. If he falls into the hole, he may have to stay there and live among the Jurijuri and end up marrying a Jurijuri woman. During a hunt, if a monkey flees from the treetop to the ground one should never pursue this animal because this animal is returning to its owner Amasan. Monkeys used to be human beings and so when they are pursued, they return to their owner. The underworld, which is the home of Amasan and the Jurijuri, is filled with all sorts of things such as houses and trade goods. Shamans can clearly see all things when they ingest natemp (ayahuasca). 8

Short of sending Jurijuri cannibal spirits, Amasan may choose to punish a transgressor by spoiling this unworthy individual’s hunting luck. As stated by Descola (1996b:130), throughout the Amazon Basin, indigenous peoples regard peccaries as being controlled by “supernatural masters who tend to keep them [peccaries] shut in vast enclosures from which they are from time to time released to confront the 8 Similar versions of this myth were recorded by Pellizzaro (1990:248–252) and by Descola (1996a:258–259).

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projectiles of hunters. So they [Achuar hunters] never kill an animal for the sake of doing so. It is important to have the consent of its invisible guardian, for he will not hesitate to hold his beasts back if he suspects that respect has not been shown to them.” Amasan’s rules are summarized below: • • • •

Never kill more animals than necessary (only take what is needed). Never boast about one’s hunting abilities (always be circumspect). Always be respectful of wild game (especially of monkeys). In order to show respect, harvested animals should be butchered in accordance with the following parameters: Broad leaves should always be placed on the soil where a slain animal is to be butchered in order to prevent the blood from falling on the ground. Once the butchering process has been completed, the bloodsoaked leaves should be disposed of in a local river. If dogs were to lick the bloodied soil from the butchering site, this would be considered disrespectful of the prey and would provoke Amasan’s anger. Consequently, the disrespectful hunter’s luck will be ruined. • Never allow dogs to chew on the bones of animals that dwell in trees (such as birds and monkeys) because Amasan will grow angry and he will punish the hunter by ruining his luck. • The bones of ground dwelling animals (such as tapir, deer, peccary, paca and agouti) can be given to dogs without fear of angering Amasan. The Achuar believe punishment stemming from breaking Amasan’s rules may manifest itself in any of the following ways: • When a transgressive hunter shoots at an animal with his blowgun, the dart will miss its target. • When a wayward shotgun hunter shoots at an animal with his firearm, his shot will miss its target or his weapon will misfire. • When a game animal sees a disobedient hunter from afar, it will not allow itself to be killed; the animal will flee to safety instead.

Shamans and Local Game Shortages Achuar shamans are believed to have the power to influence a hunter’s ability to bag game. According to Descola, “[s]hamans are supposed to exercise over animals an indirect influence of a purely negative order. It is claimed, in effect, that they are able to use their magic to make traditional peccary runs disappear from enemy territory, which in turn, drives the hordes out of the area. And so, as is often the case in Amerindian cultures, the Achuar shaman controls certain magical components of hunting,. . .” (1996a:260).9 9 For an example of how Achuar shamans are believed to able command wildlife during a crisis, see Chacon (2007:541).

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My research in the Achuar village of Alto Corrientes in the Ecuadorian Amazon focused on the subsistence hunting that took place in this community. Data collected over the course of 255 hunts conducted throughout the 1990s, reveals that local hunters bagged 42 different species.10 However, during the course of this long-term study, not a single tapir (Tapirus terrestris), white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari) or spider monkey (Ateles spp.) was ever harvested by an Alto Corrientes hunter.11 It is important to note that none of these prey types was considered taboo by Alto Corrientes villagers during the course of the study. Signs of these three species in the form of footprints and/or vocalizations were rarely encountered during hunts taking place near the village; however, signs of these three prey types increased dramatically at distances of ~14 km away from the community. It is important to note that during the study, Alto Corrientes subsistence hunters typically foraged within a ~ 13 km radius from their village.12 These findings indicate that Achuar subsistence hunters from the village of Alto Corrientes had depleted local tapir, whitelipped peccary and spider monkey populations (Chacon 2001, 2012).13 When Alto Corrientes hunters were asked to explain why tapir, white-lipped peccaries and spider monkeys had disappeared locally, they told me that malevolent shamans from neighboring villages who wished to harm their community had hidden these three prey types below ground.14 In effect, the local disappearance of tapirs, white-

10

For the exact dates of this long-term study, consult Chacon (2012:322). According to Peres (2000), large vertebrates such as tapirs, white-lipped peccaries and spider monkeys are particularly sensitive to hunting. According to Levi et al., “[s]pider monkeys act as an indicator species, as forests containing viable populations will generally contain other large vertebrates. . .” (2009:805). 12 According to Jerozolimski and Peres (2003:422), central place foraging activities typically occur within a 6 to 12 km radius of a settlement. 13 As mentioned, the absence of white-lipped peccaries in the Achuar harvest is likely to be the result of overhunting however, white-lipped peccaries have been known to move out of an area for years, then return in great numbers (Bodmer 1990; March 1993; Mayer and Brandt 1982; Sowls 1984). However, to date, white-lipped peccaries have not returned to Alto Corrientes in large numbers nor have tapir or spider monkey populations rebounded for that matter (Tukupi, personal communication, 2020). Therefore, the most reasonable explanation is to assume that overharvesting by Achuar subsistence hunters is responsible for the local extinction of tapir, white-lipped peccary and spider monkey populations. 14 Pierotti points out that Amerindians often explained the local disappearance of certain animals (such as bison) by stating that they had retreated to a “prairie” located below ground. Pierotti goes on to claim that “going below ground” is a “metaphor for moving beyond the horizon, so such stories clearly refer to migration, rather than to literal underground lands” (2011:166). However, the use of this metaphor cannot be extended to the Achuar of Alto Corrientes as the following will indicate: When I asked Achuar hunters to clarify what they meant when they stated that malevolent shamans had hidden local tapir, white-lipped peccaries and spider monkeys below ground, they emphatically said that they were not referring to a metaphorical migration. The hunters unequivocally stated that they were speaking literally when claiming that malevolent shamans had concealed wildlife at a physical location below ground. Moreover, they adamantly told me that they were referring to a hole in the ground not to some vague destination beyond the horizon. 11

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lipped peccaries and spider monkeys is attributed to sorcery, not overhunting.15 In short, the understanding that human-induced hunting pressure could reduce wildlife populations in the long-term and on a large scale is absent among the Achuar (Chacon 2012).16 The failure on the part of the Achuar to acknowledge that hunting may significantly affect local game density levels hinders their ability to effectively deal with the problem of game depletion in their territory as will be discussed below.

Discussion The fact that Achuar subsistence hunters from the village of Alto Corrientes have overharvested tapir, white-lipped peccary and spider monkey populations to the point of driving these three prey types into local extinction does not support the widely accepted characterization of indigenous peoples as innate conservationists who maintain a harmonious relationship with their environment.17 Findings indicate that Achuar foragers do not always operate with sustainability in mind, but rather they behave in ways predicted by Optimal Foraging Theory (Smith 1983). In effect, the data indicate that Achuar subsistence hunters harvest game opportunistically in order to maintain a high degree of foraging efficiency (Chacon 2001, 2012). However, it is important to note these results are not unique in that there any many other well-documented cases of Neotropical tribal groups overharvesting local wildlife populations as presented below. For example, Peres and Nascimento (2005) report that tapirs are extremely rare in the vicinity of the Kayapo village of A’Ukre. Additionally, Franzen (2006) documents the overharvesting of spider monkeys by Waorani subsistence hunters.18 Likewise, tapir and spider monkeys are becoming scarce in areas near Waimiri Atroari villages of the Brazilian Amazon (Souza-Mazurek et al. 2000). Along

15 The Achuar also report that the disappearance of wild game may be a form of punishment sent by Amasan for the failure to adhere to the aforementioned rules on how hunters should interact with wildlife. 16 According to Sirén (2006:372), “[s]ome [Lowland Kichwa] people in the older generation explicitly rejected the idea of regulating hunting in order to conserve wildlife populations, claiming that wildlife populations were not decimated by hunting, but just hidden away inside the ridges by envious shamans.” For Lake Atitlan Maya subsistence hunters, the suggestion that a native hunter could play a managerial role in resource availability was considered to be a “laughable” and “ridiculous” concept (Emery and Brown 2012:111). 17 See Chacon (2001, 2012) for a detailed analysis of the impact Achuar subsistence hunters have on local wildlife populations. 18 It is important to note that, as documented by Lu (2001:425), native Amazonians such as the Waorani are fully capable of creating and maintaining “long-standing common property management regimes fostered by secure ownership of the land, the small size and kinship ties of residence groups, the existence of mutual trust and reciprocity, and culturally sanctioned rules of behavior. This regime, however, was focused on maintaining harmonious relationships between residents. . .and not on resource conservation.”

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these lines, Alvard (1993, 1994, 1995a) states that Piro subsistence hunters do not exhibit restraint when hunting easily overhunted prey types such as tapir and monkeys, nor do they refrain from taking game when travelling through depleted areas. Additionally, Sirén (2012) observes that Lowland Kichwa hunters are depleting local woolly monkey (Lagothrix spp.) and Salvin’s curassow (Mitu salvini) populations.19 According to Stearman (1992), the Yuquí of the Bolivian Amazon have overharvested various larger-bodied and highly desired prey types in their local environment. Additionally, the cumulative effect of intense hunting by Neotropical indigenous foragers is aptly described by (Sirén et al. 2004:1315): “Hunting in tropical forests is typically most intense near human settlements, and this creates gradients of decreasing animal densities toward those settlements.” In addition, commenting on one Tenetehara village that had been inhabited for eight years, Wagley and Galvão (1949:58) report that “hunters had to go miles to hunt larger animals, such as deer and wild pork [peccary]. In such cases, they make an excursion of several days’ length.” Similarly, Smole (1976:18) observes that in the vicinity of large established Yanomamö villages, “game is extremely scarce” and this is why hunters seeking to harvest large prey types such as deer, tapir and capybara were compelled “to travel great distances to obtain desirable game animals” Smole (1976:59). Wilbert (1972:40) also notes that among the Yanomamö, “[e]ven large territories are hunted out in a relatively short time and are not quickly repopulated.” According to Carneiro (1974:159), among the Amahuaca, the environmental impact of hunting is such that communities with as few as 15 inhabitants can “severely deplete the game in their vicinity in a year or two.” However, it would be a mistake to assume that the foraging activities of Amazonian subsistence hunters invariably result in the depletion of local game. For example, the “Siona-Secoya have lived and hunted in the same region for centuries without apparent degradation of their [wildlife] resource base” (Vickers 1994:309). Ohl-Schacherer et al. (2007:1181) report that there is no evidence of the overharvesting of fauna by the Matsigenka “despite decades of hunting.” Nonetheless, it would also be a mistake to assume that the aforementioned sustainable harvesting practices documented among the Siona-Secoya and the Matsigenka stem from true “conservation” efforts, as defined by (Alvard 1995a:790). In fact, according to Vickers, traditionally, the Siona-Secoya did not engage in conservationist harvesting practices. “The available evidence suggests that the Siona-Secoya do not purposefully limit their kills to ensure the long-term sustainability of game animals” (Vickers 1994:309). Along these lines, Stearman reports that “resource management strategies do not exist among the Yuquí because they do not perceive the need for them” (1994:348). Likewise, the Waorani “did not establish explicit For the Lowland Kichwa, “[h]unting luck has always been unpredictable, and this unpredictability has been attributed to supernatural forces. The wild animals were believed to be live hidden inside the hills, and shamans were considered to have the ability not only to hide away animals in the hills, but also to let them out. Scarcity of wild game has therefore been blamed on shamans hiding away the animals because of envy” (Sirén 2006:371). 19

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resource conservation rules in part because of a belief in natural affluence” (Lu 2001:442).20

Source-Sink Conditions The sustainable harvests reported among the Siona-Secoya and the Matsigenka are not the result of concerted conservation efforts on the part of subsistence hunters but rather, they are the result of source-sink dynamics (Ohl-Schacherer et al. 2007; Vickers 1994). According to Borgerhoff-Mulder, “[s]ource-sink systems can be important in cases of human exploitation. For example, a group of Amazonian hunters may heavily harvest wildlife (in an apparently unsustainable way) within a few hours’ walk of their settlement, but if this area is contiguous with an unhunted area, natural movements of animals from the source to the sink may render the heavy offtake sustainable when both the harvested and source areas are considered together. . .” (2005:71–72).

Overharvesting of Fauna by the Achuar Cannot Be Attributed to Loss of TEK The overharvesting of certain prey types by subsistence hunters documented in this chapter cannot reasonably be attributed to the loss of faith in TEK due to the conversion to Christianity, as argued by Martin (1978). The reason for making this assertion stems from the following: Despite attempts by evangelical missionaries to eradicate all non-Christian beliefs, as previously reported, every Alto Corrientes hunter interviewed claimed a belief in Amasan and reported following the supernatural gamekeeper’s precepts. Nor can the Achuar’s environmentally harmful practices be attributed to any historical or contemporary aspects of Western colonization, as the study population inhabits a relatively egalitarian and autonomous Neotropical village setting (see Fig. 14.2). Therefore, this particular case of the overharvesting of certain prey types by subsistence hunters cannot be linked to structural conditions of intense poverty or to centuries of colonization nor can this situation be associated with any type of neocolonial arrangement, as argued by Ranco (2007).21 Moreover, According to Johnson (1989), in order to conservation measures to adopted, there first must be a perceived scarcity of the resource in question. 21 Indeed, research shows that articulation to the Western market economy often provides incentive for native peoples to overharvest local natural resources (Borgerhoff-Mulder and Coppoillo 2005; Ventocilla et al. 1996). However, contact with the West can also, under certain circumstances, actually promote conservation as the following case involving the Montagnes Indians of Labrador indicates: “In earlier [pre-contact] times, the tribe’s norms had supported community hunting rights within its forests, a system that creates few incentives for an individual hunter to conserve the stock 20

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Fig. 14.2 Egalitarian blowgun hunters from the Achuar village of Alto Corrientes (photo by R. Chacon)

of game. Once the European traders had come on the scene the tribe shifted to a system of exclusive hunting territories. . .This system is more efficient when game is scarce because the sole owner of a territory inhabited by non-migratory wild animals has a much sharper incentive than a communal hunter to avoid overhunting” (Ellickson 2001:49). Among the Montagnes, “a close relationship existed, both historically and geographically, between the development of private rights in land and the development of the commercial fur trade. . .Because of the lack of control over hunting by others, it is in no person’s interest to invest or maintain the stock of game” (Demsetz 1967:351).

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the depletion of local tapir, white-lipped peccary and spider monkey populations was caused by Achuar subsistence hunters who maintain a relatively traditional way of life marked by minor articulation with the market economy. Thus, this instance of environmental degradation cannot be linked to “drastic organizational changes and fragmentation of cultural based knowledge” as suggested by Alcorn (1995:803). 22 Therefore, I argue, that it is not the Achuar’s loss of TEK concerning wildlife population dynamics that spurs the overharvesting of game, but rather, it is the retention of TEK concerning wildlife population dynamics that provides an ideological template conducive to overhunting local tapir, white-lipped peccary and spider monkey populations.23 As previously stated, traditionally, the Achuar attribute game scarcity on the failure to follow Amasan’s rules for harvesting wildlife and/or they blame the ritual activities of malevolent shamans for the disappearance of certain prey types.24 In short, Achuar hunters of Alto Corrientes never attributed local game scarcity to the overharvesting wildlife.25

22 It is also important to note that neither Martin (1978) nor Ranco (2007) offers any explanations as to why many precontact Amerindian populations chose to degrade their local environments as reported by Chacon and Mendoza (2012), Jones et al. (2008), Kay and Simmons (2002), Mann (2005), Raab and Jones (2004) and Webster (2002). 23 Along these lines, other Amerindians, such as the Cree, hold that a hunter’s inability to bag wild animals results from either an individual’s failure to treat the game spirits with respect or from sorcery, not from a decline in local wildlife populations due to overhunting (Charles Bishop, personal communication 2010; Bishop 1981; Bishop and Lytwyn 2007). Moreover, one Yup’ik individual “expressed a strong belief in the idea that human use of animals results in increased availability” (Zavaleta 1999:258 [original emphasis]). Also, some Cree believe that the more animals they kill, the more animals will be available to them (Brightman 1993; Hames 2000). Additionally, Stearman reports that “the Yuquí did not, and still do not recognize that [natural] resources are finite” (1994:348). Likewise, contemporary Maya hunters assert that a supernatural animal guardian will regenerate wildlife as long as hunters see to it that the bones from harvested animals are properly treated (Emery and Brown 2012). For further documentation of similar beliefs among Amerindian groups see (Curtiss 1922; Fienup-Riordan 1990; Hultkrantz 1961; Krech 1981, 1999, 2007; Looper 2019; Loubser 2005; Niezen 2009; Slotten 1966; Swanton 1905; Tanner 1979; Zavaleta 1999). 24 Similarly, among the Apurinã, “[w]hen hunters are unable to bring back game from their hunting trips, the most common reasons given are that they must have behaved disrespectfully towards the master of game” (Virtanen 2017:98). According to Fernández-Llemazares et al. (2017:86), “[w] ildlife scarcity is generally conceived by the Tsimane’ as a consequence of them not having respected certain established cultural norms, which ultimately results in direct harm to the wildlife populations, as well as by the animal deities discontentment. The latter is also believed to be exacerbated by the Tsimane’ relative inability to communicate with the spirits protecting the animals, due to the disappearance of shamans.” 25 Interestingly, in South America, the belief in supernatural gamekeepers was not limited to the Neotropics as indicated by the following: Cobo (1990) reports that in general, the Inka held that each type of land animal and bird had a particular guardian star in the heavens that was charged with that animal’s protection and increase. Cobo adds that the Inka believed that all of these guardians originated from the Pleiades star cluster. Likewise, Blas Valera (cited in Hyland 2011:51), reports that for the Inka, certain stars were “assigned various duties, some to care for and guard and nourish sheep [llamas and alpacas], others lions [pumas], others serpents, others plants, and the rest of all things.”

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Why Not Conserve? The most likely reason why Alto Corrientes subsistence hunters choose to deplete tapir, white-lipped peccary and spider monkey populations, instead of practicing conservation, is because prior to sustained contact with the West, groups like the Achuar never had the need to conserve wild game.26 In precontact times, whenever a local area became depleted, villagers simply relocated their settlement to a nondepleted area.27 Relocation to a distantly located nonoverharvested area would have been an ideal solution for the Achuar villagers of Alto Corrientes in the past. Unfortunately, the option is no longer a viable possibility as regional indigenous communities have been granted legal titles to their lands. Thus, the possibility of long-distance resettlement is no longer feasible for the inhabitants of Alto Corrientes because neighboring lands are legally owned and occupied by other indigenous communities.

Western Contact, Population Growth and Changing Needs Undoubtedly, adherence to Amasan’s rules on the part of Achuar subsistence hunters certainly resulted in the reduction of hunting pressure placed on local wild game. However, given the effects of sustained contact with the West, even if it were the case that traditional indigenous peoples always harvested natural resources with conservation in mind, this would not necessarily prevent groups like the Achuar from degrading their environment presently. For example, access to modern medicine along with pacification often leads to an increase in human fertility, life expectancy and subsequent population growth (Werner 1983).28 Thus, even if native populations were to continue consuming only what they actually need (as mandated by their respective supernatural gamekeepers), this is no guarantee that the 26

The conditions necessary for conservation to occur have been specified by Alvard (1998, 2002), Hames (1991), Johnson (1989) and Smith (2001). 27 This relocation can be explained by Patch Selection Theory (Smith 1983; Smith and Wishnie 2000). 28 Chagnon (1997:245) observes that Yanomamö villages with sustained contact with outsiders for 30 years or more, experienced lower mortality rates as they were comprised of individuals who had survived the initial “health shock” ensuing from contact with the Western world. Among the Waimiri Atroari of Brazil, the population is growing by 7% per year indicating an increasing need for substantially more food resources in the near future (Souza-Mazurek et al. 2000:594). Lu (2001:441) reports the presence of a high birth rate and a low death rate among the Waorani due to the availability of medical care and the cessation of warfare. According to Schwartzman and Zimmerman, “[i]n the late 1970s the Kayapó numbered around 1300. . .The Kayapó now number more than 5000. . .” (2005:722–724). See Picchi (2006) for documentation of a similar demographic rebound among the Bakairí. Likewise, the Lowland Kichwa of Sarayaku are experiencing a rise in population which is placing greater demands on local natural resources (Sirén 2006). Similarly, the Tsimane’ of Bolivia are growing in number (Reyes-García et al. 2014).

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harvesting wild game would be conducted at a sustainable rate because the needs of these expanding populations will eventually exceed their local environment’s carrying capacity. 29 Not only will the needs of Indigenous communities grow (as the result of increased population pressure) but also the perceived needs of individuals may also radically change as native peoples become increasingly connected to the global market economy.30 The desire for trade goods and/or wealth may cause some native groups to voluntarily modify or to abandon traditional/sustainable subsistence practices for those activities that provide them with cash for purchasing Western manufactures.31 Therefore, policy makers, natural resource managers and social scientists should not naively assume that Indigenous peoples, when faced with dynamic new socioeconomic situations, will be able to, or will even want to, retain their traditional natural resource utilization strategies (Henrich 1997).32 This point can be seen in how “. . .several [Neotropical] Indian tribes have a process of outright liquidation of their land resource capital in the form of western-style land concessions granted to logging companies and gold miners. For instance, having found their way to lucrative markets, the Kayapo of eastern Amazonia have logged $33 million in profits from mahogany extraction alone in 1988. . .” (Peres 1994:586–587). According to Schwartzman and Zimmerman (2005:723–724), “Kayapó lands were once rich in mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla), the most valuable timber species on earth, but after more than a decade of uncontrolled logging, mahogany is scarce.”33 Moreover, “[o]ther Brazilian groups helping to shatter the myth of the noble savage include the Guajara of the northeast, the

29 According to Alvard (1995b), human population increases may be more important for the decline of game species than the adoption of more efficient hunting technology. However, see Shepard et al. who hold that “. . .hunting technology has a far more significant impact on game depletion than population growth” (2012:658). 30 See Hugh-Jones (1992), Le Tourneau (2015) and Virtanen et al. (2012), for documentation of how the material wants of Amazonian peoples may significantly change once they come into contact with the Western world. Along these lines, see Shepard (2002) for his concern over the impact of the Western world on the Matsigenka. 31 Dowie states that “. . .not all indigenous people are perfect land stewards. Only cultural romantics believe that. And even those who were good stewards in years past may cease being so due to population growth, erosion of culture, market pressures, and the misuse of destructive technologies” (2009:111). 32 “[I]t is often claimed that forest resources will be well managed if only the traditional users were allowed to maintain control. It is, indeed, widely believed that traditional communities use their resources in a sustainable manner. This belief is based on the fact that traditional communities lived at low densities, had limited technology, and practiced subsistence rather than commercial utilization. Unfortunately, given growing population pressure, increased access to modern technology, increasing market orientation, and steady erosion of traditional cultures, there is no guarantee that biodiversity objectives will be any more likely to be achieved if resource control is placed in the hands of indigenous people” (Kramer and Schaik cited in Lu Holt 2005:199–200). 33 However, Peres and Zimmerman report that “. . .our recent work at the Kayapó Reserve has clearly shown how conservation of full biotic integrity of forest ecosystems can be achieved within large Indian areas with the full collaboration of local communities. . .” (2000:795). Additionally, according to Schwartzman and Zimmerman (2005:725), as soon as “mahogany logging on Kayapó

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Kaxarari of Acre, and the Nambikwara of Mato Grosso, all of which are involved in prime hardwood business. These market oriented practices are clearly not what is generally considered genuine nature conservation,. . .” (Peres 1994:587). A similarly disturbing example of environmental mismanagement has been reported among the Kuna of Panama. According to Ventocilla et al. (1996:41), “[i] n less than ten years lobsters have become the principal export commodity of Kuna Yala. Yet the Kuna are driving this species toward local extinction only to satisfy the refined palates of consumers living outside the comarca;. . .These activities are taking place in the shadow of the complacency of Kuna authorities and, it seems, of the distant local government.” Thus, once articulation with markets has been established, it is misguided to assume that indigenous peoples will invariably harvest natural resources at sustainable levels. In fact, Ventocilla et al. (1996:52) wisely advise that “[w]e must leave the myths behind. There is a myth about the noble savage, and another about the noble ecologist. Both stereotypes suffer from romanticism and subjectivity. There are people and organizations that claim that Indians, simply by being Indians, are innate conservationists who live in harmony with their surroundings. We believe that this myth, which has fed the opportunism of both indigenous organizations and individuals, was created because of a psychological need on the part of organizations and intellectuals from the North. But indigenous people are not perfect; as human beings they are capable of destroying their natural resource base. At the same time, we should not deny the characteristics of their being and their way of life that allow them to relate to nature in a more benign manner. By the same token, we should not think that ecological people and organizations automatically deserve halos for their efforts.”

Conclusions In this chapter, I have argued that beliefs in supernatural gamekeepers/animal masters are forms of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) found throughout the Neotropics. Among the Achuar, this belief is made manifest in the form of Amasan (the supernatural owner of game). While faith in this supernatural being remains firm, local subsistence hunters Alto Corrientes have overharvested tapir, white-lipped peccary and spider monkey populations to the point of causing them to become locally extinct (Chacon 2001, 2012). Thus, despite the presence of TEK (in the form of their belief in Amasan), the Achuar overharvested certain prey types. 34 Moreover, when queried as to why tapir, white-lipped peccary and spider monkey

lands was interrupted, the Kayapó began organizing associations to access support for community needs.” 34 See Dye, Chap. 12 of this volume, for a similar assertion that the belief in supernatural gamekeepers provides an ideological template which fosters the of overharvesting of wildlife by native hunters.

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where no longer available locally, Alto Corrientes hunters blamed the scarcity of these three prey types on the actions of malevolent shamans or they explained that it was punishment for some infraction of Amasan’s rules. As previously stated, for traditional Achuar hunters, the notion that local wildlife populations may decline as a result of overhunting is unknown. The problem raised by Alto Corrientes subsistence hunters who have overharvested three large bodied and highly desired prey types to the point of causing them to become locally extinct (Chacon 2001, 2012) is exacerbated by the fact that village’s population is increasing (Tukupi, personal communication, 2020). Thus, the following disturbing trend has emerged: As the population of the village of Alto Corrientes is increasing, the number of large bodied and highly desired prey types available to local subsistence hunters is decreasing. First, given this volatile situation, the most ethical plan of action, on the part of scholars interested in promoting the health and well-being of indigenous peoples such as the Achuar, should be to reject the essentialist assumption that Amerindians are innate conservationists. Second, researchers should strive to accurately assess the impact indigenous groups are having on their respective environments. Third, I concur with Read et al. (2010:213) who state that “researchers and managers should be careful to incorporate both the local environmental and cultural/spiritual contexts in studies that inform biodiversity and sustainable resource-use management.” The incorporation of such “spiritual contexts” would include an understating of how belief in the supernatural gamekeeper Amasan affects the harvesting patterns of Achuar subsistence hunters. These actions would provide anthropologists, biologists, wildlife managers, policy makers and native stakeholders with the requisite data for designing and implementing effective community-based long-term game management plans created to foster sustainable faunal harvests before wildlife depletion reaches critical levels.35 In summation, I call for the development of an “adapted management” regime (Hill and Padwe 2000:81) among the Achuar that may include the establishment of bag limits, no-take zones and/or temporary moratoriums on harvesting depleted species.36 This effort would recognize the need for Achuar collaboration that would incorporate TEK into any plan along with continual monitoring and appropriate adjustments in Achuar hunting to promote sustainable game harvests.37

35 An example of such an endeavor can be found among the aforementioned task force comprised of environmentalists and cultural anthropologists who collaborated with Embera tribal elders and traditional ritual specialists to foment sustainable harvesting protocols for the native population inhabiting Utría National Park. An important aspect of this partnership was that the program respectfully incorporated Embera TEK (Ulloa et al. 2004). 36 Sirén et al. (2004) also suggest the establishment of no-take areas as a possible solution to local wildlife depletion. 37 For example, one such successful collaboration involved researchers training selected Ache hunters in data collection protocols. The Ache involved in this project employed their TEK to locate, identify and count many types of Neotropical wildlife. Consequently, these native

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As in the previously mentioned case involving the Canadian Inuit and bowhead whales, some forms of TEK have proven valuable in efforts aimed at promoting biodiversity. However, this research has also shown that some forms of TEK, such as the belief in the existence of supernatural gamekeepers/animal masters, may actually hinder efforts aimed at preventing environmental degradation. Nevertheless, it is essential that, “. . .Indigenous peoples. . .be part of any conversation or debate on policy options around sustainability issues” (Fernández-Llamazares and Virtanen 2020:25) because native “perspectives of defaunation can. . .play an important role in creating or blocking incentives for the sustainable management of wildlife” (Fernández-Llemazares et al. 2017:87). Lastly, the debate in academia should shift from promoting the caricature of the ‘ecologically noble savage’ (as coined by Redford 1991) “towards a discussion of how we can foster conservationist behavior in hand with cultural survival” (Lu 2001:444). Acknowledgments I wish to thank Dr. Patricio Moncayo (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Ecuador) for years of friendship and collaboration. In addition, much gratitude is extended toward Steve and Dorothy Nelson, Mauro and Susana Palacios along with Silvio and Viviana Almeida for their friendship and gracious hospitality while in Ecuador. My deepest and most sincere gratitude goes to my Achuar friends of Alto Corrientes. I am most grateful to Winthrop University’s Dr. Jeannie Haubert (Chair of the Sociology, Criminology, and Anthropology Program) for her steadfast support of my research along with all the personnel at the Dacus Library, particularly the Inter Library Loan Department. I am also most indebted to Dr. Raymond Hames, Dr. Stephen Beckerman and Dr. David Dye for their useful comments on this chapter. Lastly, I would like to thank my wife Yamilette Chacon for assisting me in countless ways with writing this chapter. I thank her for her steadfast support, patience and understanding throughout the entire process of completing this work.

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coinvestigators helped Western researchers arrive at a highly accurate understanding of the study area’s faunal density (Hill and Padwe 2000).

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Dr. Richard J. Chacon is a Professor at Winthrop University. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Amazonia among the Yanomamö of Venezuela, the Yora of Peru and the Achuar (Shiwiar) of Ecuador. In the Andes, he worked among the Otavalo and Cotacachi Indians of Highland Ecuador. His research interests include indigenous subsistence strategies, natural resource conservation, belief systems, warfare, secret societies, the development of social complexity, collective action, optimal foraging theory, ethnohistory, ethics, and the effects of globalization on indigenous peoples.

Chapter 15

Andean Guardian Mountains and the Ethical Obligations Underlying Resource Management: Between Reciprocity and Predation Denise Y. Arnold

Abstract Throughout the southern Andes, notions of ownership and stewardship by the high mountains, with their gamekeeper aspects, underpin the use of natural resources among local populations. These mountain guardians have distinct names in different regions (apu, uywiri, Coquena. . .). These beings are thought to own and care for the animals and other elements of the natural world within their domains, and their power is widely acknowledged among Andean herders and agriculturalists. This essay explores the biocultural manifestations of these religious and cosmopolitical ideas, the role of these guardian mountain beings in ritual life, and the ideas and practices that regulate human and nonhuman relations in this complex, drawing on fieldwork among the Aymara-speaking ayllu communities of Qaqachaka in the southcentral Andes. These relations tend to be expressed in terms of reciprocity, but other asymmetrical kinds of dependency, less studied to date, include threats of punishment if established rules of behavior are not followed. This complex of ideas seems to have dominated Andean understandings of the hunt in the recent past and underlies notions about sustainability in herding and agricultural life in this mountainous region today. Similar ideas have been explored in an Amazonian context, and this essay examines an Andean counterpart. Keywords Andes · Mountain guardians · Gamekeepers · Animal masters · Resource sustainability · Andean deontics · Aymara The idea that the animals, plants, minerals and other resources of the natural world are watched over by the nonhuman beings known as Masters, Owners or Guardians, whom humans acknowledge through practices directed at resource management, reinforced by ritual behavior, seems to be a universal, with long historical D. Y. Arnold (✉) Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara, La Paz, Bolivia University College London, London, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. J. Chacon (ed.), The History and Environmental Impacts of Hunting Deities, Conflict, Environment, and Social Complexity 4, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37503-3_15

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antecedents (Chittenden 1947). The ideas underlying these practices are probably fundamental to human life, perhaps even fundamental to human origins. However, certain omissions in the current literature about human–Master relations limit our understanding of the far-reaching implications of these behavioral patterns. First, the vital importance of human–Master relations has tended to be underrated in anthropological studies with an animist stance, that names these Master-beings in terms of forest or mountain “spirits,” as if they were ephemeral supernatural beings, rather than powerful figures that influence human behavior. Second, the common references to the ongoing reciprocal pacts and exchanges between humans and these other-than-human beings in terms of symmetrical and reciprocal relations, omit to mention the more hierarchical power relations that can take place (Lema 2020: 25; Pazzarelli 2017). And third, a world of humans practicing reciprocal relations with ephemeral spirits does not explain satisfactorily the power of the moral and ethical conduct assumed by humans within the sphere of these human–Master relations, nor their far-reaching ecological consequences. In order to obviate these omissions, I focus my attention here on the moral and ecological consequences of these relations in the southern Andes, with particular reference to my own ethnographic work among Aymara speakers in the Bolivian highlands. Ethnographic accounts of the Animal Masters in this mountainous expanse describe how local populations perceive these mountain beings, and how human interrelations with them trigger a set of moral obligations vital to regional life and its continuity. Some studies already consider the ecological consequences of these human– Master relations. Claudia Comberti et al. (2015) reworked the tendency formerly called “ecosystem service,” which they rename “cultural service to ecosystems,” to highlight the human obligations in these interrelations. Even so, this tendency avoids mention of the punitive aspects of the Animal Masters and the moral dimensions of these human–Master relations. Recent work on these Animal Masters in the Amazon rainforest, and the montaña closer to the Andes, does pay attention to the ways these beings are acknowledged, in terms of the local practices of wildlife management and sustainability (Chacon 2012:351, n60; Fernández-Llamazares and Virtanen 2020), where the power of these beings to influence human behavior through predation takes on an important turn (Descola 2012:455). But, to date, fewer studies have adopted this approach in the Andes. In the extensive Andean mountain range, human relations with the Animal Masters vary from place to place, and, as elsewhere, are longstanding (Oyaneder Rodriguez 2022; Smith 2012). North of Cajamarca in Peru, Marieka Sax (2019) describes how human–mountain relations often concern predatory attacks on humans and how powerful place-based spirits inspire healing practices by ritual experts from these acts of malicious witchcraft and sorcery. This northern Andean complex has much in common with lowland practices where shamans act as intermediaries between humans and the Animal Masters (Descola 2012:483; Gutierrez Choquevilca 2011; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971, 1996). In the southern Andes, human–mountain relations take on other aspects. Sax notes the existence there of a “mountain spirit complex,” where rituals to the high

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guardian mountains are viewed as part of a “reciprocal pact” between local populations and these powerful places (Sax 2011, 2019:98, see also Bold 2020:198–199; Gose 2008:324). However, many studies that propose that these pacts between humans and mountains are mediated through symmetrical relations of reciprocity, often expressed in the native languages of Aymara and Quechua by the term ayni, play down the power of these mountain beings to influence behavior (Salas Carreño 2017; Temple 2000). The Aymara term, uywaña (or uywasiña), describes the social relation of “rearing mutually” between the guardian mountains and human populations under their charge, but references to this concept, too, tend to promote a reciprocal and symmetrical slant (Martínez 1976:26; Van Kessel 1980: 320). Yet, other studies perceive these forms of reciprocity as defining the very lifeways of Andeans within their own distinct social universe (Mannheim 1986:268). Symmetrical reciprocity of this kind is envisaged in terms of human–mountain relations mediated by sacrifice, payment, hunger and feeding, but again without much attention to the predatory side of these relations (Allen 2002:127–35; Fernández Juarez 2004:135; Gose 1994:223–24; Sax 2011:83–84, 89–92). Typically, Marisol de la Cadena’s proposal, in her book Earth Beings (2015), that human–mountain relations around Cusco are perceived in terms of benign “kinship” relations, has been criticized recently by Peter Gose (2018:489), precisely for its lack of attention to other more predatory relations. Some studies do locate these human and nonhuman relations within wider ecological interrelations (Gil García 2012:40; Haber 2011:95). Rosalyn Bold (2020:195), following Marisol de la Cadena’s lead elsewhere, proposes that, in the Kallawaya region in northern Bolivia, local populations think of mountains as suppliers of both “natural resources” and “earth beings.” Comberti et al.’s humancentered reworking of “ecosystem services” also implies that local practices of making offerings, especially sacrifices, to the mountains, occur within a wider “social contract” between humans and their environments, directed toward stabilizing ecological systems and controlling resource management within determined territories (Comberti et al. 2015:254). Another approach asks whether local ritual practices are really directed at resource preservation, rather than just hunting efficiency, and how sustainable methods of harvesting might be better accomplished through social mechanisms that punish or threaten punishment for those that fail to practice conservation (Hames 1991, cited in Chacon 2012:315). But again, the moral dimensions already explicit in the human–Game Master relations are overlooked. Given these absences in the literature, a wider understanding of the moral dimensions underlying human behavior in these human–mountain interrelations would benefit from an analysis that combines the reciprocal aspects between caregivers and their offspring, with relations of “alterity” predicated upon more dangerous liaisons (Lema 2014, 2020:25; Przytomska-La Civita 2019), where mutual rearing is combined with predation (Bugallo 2020; Gose 2018:488, 493; Salvucci 2015:66). This approach has been explored in the lowland context of the Amazon rainforest (Costa and Fausto 2019:195–196; Fausto 2008, 2014), and Andean ethnography suggests that the same kinds of issues are in play. In this highland context, it is equally pertinent to understand how the underlying moral values in

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these human–mountain relations might emerge from the tensions between more collective reciprocal exchanges, and those based on predation and power. This entails attention to what might link these seemingly separate domains into a more coherent set of moral imperatives, and what the history of these moral imperatives might be. Detailed ethnographic evidence in the southern Andes concerning these human– mountain relations reveals that the conditions underlying any social pact entail more than relations of reciprocity (Fernández Juarez 1997; Lanata 2007:335). Guardian mountains are thought to hold predatory relations of mastery and ownership over their immediate environments, and their predatory responses to the humans under their charge are a reaction to their failure to accomplish their part of these reciprocal pacts. As Gose suggests, the guardian mountains in local thought become points of reference for nonhuman powers over humans (Gose 2018:488–489), which constrain human intervention in these mountainous environments, and respond to the excessive abuse of extracting too many minerals, or too many animals or plants, by devouring the humans at fault (Przytomska-La Civita 2019:47). This underlying Andean “deontics” concerning the ways human behavior is constrained by their moral obligations to particular mountains, and how mountain beings are appeased only through periodic offerings and sacrifices, in a tributary sense, is my interest here. A study of these ideas is particularly relevant to our present situation, as it reveals the human acknowledgment that regional resources are limited, and that control mechanisms for the ecosystem to reproduce itself were present in the recent past, possibly based on behavioral patterns with longstanding origins. Previous studies with an ecological focus, notably the North American anthropologist Roy Rappaport’s classic study Pigs for the Ancestors (1968), centered in Papua New Guinea, already insisted on the “moral efficacy” of such culturally construed rituals, and the analytic validity of the ecological thinking that accompanied them. Accompanying the recent demise in resource management, the moral imperative underlying the former importance of Animal Masters has also diminished in modern times, in everyday practices and the anthropological descriptions of these. Evidence over the last few decades shows that many Andean groups are now characterized by over grazing, and excessive cultivation without adequate periods of fallow, leading to a generalized environmental degradation (Godoy 1984; Orlove and Godoy 1986). Amazonian groups, too, such as the Ecuadorian Achuar, are now engaging in overhunting (Chacon 2012:343), while the Bolivian Yuquí, who have suffered resource depletion mainly by outsiders since the 1980s, now have to hunt ever further from camp (Stearman 1990, cited in Chacon 2012:347–348). So while I examine here the underlying rules characterizing these past practices, an additional challenge would be to explore the reasons for their abandonment.

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Andean Mountains as Masters of the Animals: Toward the Ethical Values Underlying Human–Mountain Relations What are the characteristics of the underlying ethical values that motivate the moral obligations to obey these ecological norms, at least in the recent past? These kinds of values have long been implicit in Andean ethnography, in the writings of Catherine Allen, Gabriel Martínez, Alejandro Haber, Verónica Lema and others, although their specific characteristics have not been analyzed. One recent approach to understanding human–environment entanglements in the Ecuadorian montaña, by Eduardo Kohn in How forests think (2013:9), is in terms of “multispecies communication and interrelations.” Further south, Marisol de la Cadena, in Earth Beings (2015), reconceptualizes these interrelations in highland Peru as part of an “indigenous cosmopolitics,” adding a contemporary political focus that opposes local cosmologies and ritual practices with state and private impositions, notably extractive mining (cf. Bold 2020:195). But still, the accompanying aspects of mastery and ownership attributed to the mountain guardians, in underlying relations of predation and power, together with the human attempts to assuage this by establishing relations of commensality through feeding (in sacrifices and other offerings), tend to be underplayed. A cursory glance at the lowland equivalents to these Andean ideas confirms how human–environment interrelations concern not just relations of reciprocity but also of mastery and ownership over regional ecosystems by other-than-human beings. Carlos Fausto (2008) clarifies that mastery and ownership in these contexts does not imply the possession of private property, in a modern Western sense. He points out that, while these notions of mastery can express some of the past hierarchies of lowland societies, the notions of ownership concern categories whose reciprocal terms designate modes of relationship that apply to humans, as well as nonhumans and things. In his work with Luiz Costa, these notions of power and mastery are shown to underlie the relations established between humans and nonhumans (Fausto 2008; Costa and Fausto 2019:202). Note that in a lowland setting, instead of guardian mountains, the masters or owners of the game animals are predatory beings of the forest. Considerable attention has been given to the relations between humans and these game masters, in decades of studies into lowland perspectivism (Stolze Lima 1999; Viveiros de Castro 2012). These current debates are just as pertinent for rethinking existing ethnographies of southern Bolivia and northwest Argentina, where the Andean equivalents to these lowland ideas include the vital role of the guardian mountains as Masters (or Mistresses) over the animals and other resources within their domains, and the human obligations toward these beings, to gain access to their resources. My argument is that Andean ritual practices that seek to regulate ecological conditions, also help sustain and reproduce these existing interrelations. In practice, human actors during these rituals acknowledge the important mountains not so much as “spiritual beings” as “persons” with diverse characteristics: geological, meteorological and biotic; and they include among their characteristics the assumption of

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human sociality (Gose 2018:489). A common cultural expression of these mountain persons is as the bearded grandfathers doubled over with age, portrayed at fiestas in the dance called awki awki (many grandfathers). Classic studies call this mountain being the “Master of the Animals,” with its female counterpart as the “Mistress of the Animals” (Chittenden 1947). In the Bolivian highlands, the mountain guardians are called in the native languages uywiri: “that which rears or nourishes,” or else achachila (“grandfather/ancestor”), wamani (“falcon”) and mallku (“condor”), depending on the region. Their female counterpart is the Pachamama or Virgin Earth (Choque Churata 2009). These terms of respect go beyond any simple notion of gamekeeper or steward. Further north, in Peru, people call these mountains guardians by deferential Quechua terms such as apu (“lord”), kuraka (“chief”), jirka (“glacial peak”) or awkillu (ancestral “mummy”), or reiterate the names mallku (“condor”) and wamani (“falcon) (Allen 2002:26; Favre 1967; Rivera Andia 2003:457–470; Shapero 2019; Valderrama and Escalante 2011). As in the lowlands, hierarchical influences from a historical background can allude to these beings as ancestors or chiefs, with additional predatory overtones by naming them after these birds of prey. At the same time, these beings can have individualized personalities, with their own life events and life histories (Alderman 2015; Gemio 2009; Przytomska-La Civita 2019:40). Further south, in northwest Argentina, this tutelary being is called “Coquena,” and is considered a quasi-human personage of ambiguous gender who wanders about wearing animal skins. Coquena owns his (or her) equivalent herds of wild animals (sallqa) (Bugallo 2020; Forgione 1994). As in Bolivia, local lore relates how Coquena’s dog is a feline, the chickens are condors, the camelids are vicuña, and so on. Coquena’s troops of vicuña (and other beasts) are thought to carry minerals from mines deep inside the mountains through the night, in memory of the historical flow of tributary wealth toward these powerful ritual sanctuaries throughout the whole region (Arnold 2021:59). These narrative strategies situate human–mountain relations within much wider ecological relations. Similarly, the notion of “rearing mutually” includes the reciprocal nourishing that takes place between humans and mountains through feeding (Arnold 2021:295; Mannheim and Carreño 2015; Ramírez 2005; Weismantel 1998), but also by clothing (Arnold 2021:296) and in a more familial sense of caring for one another. For their part, humans offer animal sacrifices to appease the hunger of the mountains and the earth, and to preempt the danger of being eaten themselves. The mountain and earth beings respond by releasing game animals or minerals from their interior, or by caring for the local herd animals, in providing green pastures and waters. The new generations of herd animals feed on these and render layers of meat and fat, which in turn satiate human appetites. In ritual practices, these initial cycles of feeding through animal sacrifice are thought to generate further ecological cycles. For example, the subsequent cycling of water, and the life-giving energy related to breath (sama) as the winds that release the rains, are held to derive from these prior reciprocal feeding cycles (Allen 2002:33ff., 73, 107–110, 127–135; Arnold 2016:139; Arnold and Hastorf

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2008:75; Bugallo 2015:109; De la Cadena 2015:94–95; Fernández Juarez 2004:134–135; Gose 1994:126–135, 194–254, 2008:314–319). Andean herders and farmers make these food offerings at key moments in the agricultural year. These include Carnival time, the opening of the ground in the fields at sowing, harvest time and just after the harvest, when other rituals take place (Allen 2002:129–143; Fernández Juarez 2004:134; Gose 1994:110–114, 151–152, 156–157, 165–167, 174, 194–195; Sax 2011:39–49). In the south-central Andes, the two most important moments in the year are in February, to accompany the animal marking ceremony, and in August, when the ground is opened for sowing (Bugallo 2015:43; Pazzarelli 2014; Arnold 2016:138). The accompanying rituals are directed toward the local Guardian Mountain and the Pachamama, his consort and female counterpart. As Sax notes for other regions, householders who neglect to make these offerings can experience crop failure, animal loss and the illness (including soul loss) or death of family members because of the retribution of an angry mountain being (Crandon-Malamud 1991:4–5; Gose 1994:220, 222; Thomas et al. 2009). In the Andes, the details of these ritual acts have changed over time, notably in colonial history. Peter Gose points out that, depending on the colonial history of each region, these beings are perceived as more Andean, or more Western (Gose 2008, 2018:489). Gose goes further to suggest that, in the colonial period, the worship of ancestors who animated the local landscape became transformed into a personification of the landscape itself (2008:241). In this historical transformation, Andean peoples came to see particular mountains as tutelary divinities who mediated the relations between the community and the state (Gose 2016:11–12, 2018: 296–297). As a result, the mountains themselves took on the characteristics of powerful outsiders, associated with the new regional colonial elites, and the social memories of an intrusive conquest (Sax 2019 summarizes this argument). I am not convinced by this line of thought, given the universal examples of forest and mountain beings that take on similar personified aspects. Moreover, within the ayllus of southern Bolivia, there is evidence of local agency in the reconstituting of their beliefs and practices over time, including the molding of landscapes (cf. Kohn 2007). Rather than allusions to the Spanish Conquest and Spanish elites within these human–mountain relations, there are appropriations and reworkings of colonial ideas to resituate them within the more Andean setting of the Inka state and the Inka incursion into the region. Mountains and mountain beings often have Inka trappings (Arnold 2021:53–54), and it is common to hear that Inkas, Chullpas (the pre-Christian people of the Andes) and mountains are but one. This alternative line of argument is presented in Dieter Müβig’s analysis of the famous colonial painting of the Virgin of the Mountain, housed in the Casa de la Moneda in Potosí, where an ostensibly Christian image of Mary plays on parallel allusions to the more Andean themes of the Mistress of the Animals and the Pachamama (Müβig 2020:185–191).

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A Bolivian Example of Human–Mountain Interrelations In my own fieldwork among the Aymara speakers of Qaqachaka marka and its six ayllus, south of Oruro, these rituals occur on the same dates, and redistributive obligations extend into these wider ecological cycles. The Qaqachakas are agriculturalists and herders. The men care for the male animals and attended to rearing males as beasts of burden in the recent past, and on butchering males for meat until today, whereas the women care for the female animals and their young, with their attention on breeding. The moral impulse underlying their rituals to the mountains goes beyond simple human interventions into a more consolidated deontic sphere organized at a higher level. In the book River of Fleece, River of Song (Arnold and Yapita 2001:175–176), we describe how the herder Doña María Ayca emphasized the reciprocal pact between the people of Qaqachaka and the great mountains of the place. Doña María insisted that these high mountains, called uywiri, are regarded as the real “owners” (tuyñu) of the animals. The people of the ayllu only “borrow” them, and, in exchange, they must make a regular system of “payments” (pagos) in offerings. These offerings, of the first fruits from the earth, or the carcasses of animals fed on the pastures of the place, feed the hungry mountains and ensure they will continue to release their animals in the future, and watch over the herds. Doña María added a historical aspect to these norms. According to her grandparents, the moral imperatives to carry out these ritual practices were originally directed by the Sun and the Moon (the Inka gods), before they entered into dialogue with the Guardian Mountains, and their female consort, the Virgin Earth. The first reciprocal pact was thus between the highest mountains of the place and these sky gods, who released the herd animals from their celestial abodes in the “dark lakes” of the Milky Way, especially those with the form of a Mother Llama (Jach’a Tayka) and her offspring, and sent them down to earth (Arnold and Yapita 2001:175–176). This local history echoes similar allusions to how the animals came originally from these dark constellations in the colonial text of the Rites and Traditions of Huarochiri, written around 1608. Both accounts imply that this mutual dependence derived from a system of exchange, an Andean ethics driven by a primeval law of property rights and their recompense. In Qaqachaka, in the annual ceremonies held in August, and especially in the more extensive ceremonies held every three years, a family sacrifices a male sheep or llama. As they do so, the older people present make an invocation in Aymara saying in effect: “Red water, snowballs, don’t grow thin, oh, Herder mountain, Provider of meat and fat” (Arnold and Yapita 2001:102). This is because, when snowballs melt, they set off a sequence of water dripping to the ground, giving rise to the running waters in the ayllus. They are referring to the idea that, under the charge of the Guardian Mountains, the meat and fat that clothed the sacrificial animal become transformed into new coverings of pastures, and the new meaty and fatty layers of a new generation of young herd animals, and these cycles in turn initiate a new cycle

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of rains and waters that flow down from the high mountains (Arnold and Yapita 2001:176; Bugallo 2015:109). Later on, the ritual participants consume the sacrificial meat at a family banquet, taking care not to break any of the bones. The visceral fat is meanwhile softened by heating it and refined into llamp’u, to offer to the family’s own Guardian Mountain. After the feast, a ritual specialist gathers up all the bones of the sacrificed animal, which he takes that night (the ritual takes place at the dark of the moon) to the family offering place (liwaña) on the side of their Guardian Mountain, accompanied by the men of the family. First, they open and prepare the offering pit, regarded as the mountain’s “box” or caja, which has been in the family for decades, if not centuries. Caja is a juridical name, as the sacrificial offering is considered a kind of tribute. It is also a reference to the idea of a “communal stomach,” sometimes called Tata Riy caja: the “stomach of the Inka King.” There the specialist reconstitutes the entire skeleton, with its skull, carcass and tail, penis and testicles, recovers the bones with a new “meaty layer” of green coca leaves and red flowers, and inters it with other ritual ingredients (the softened llama fat, llama fetuses, yellow and white ground maize, sweets, cinnamon stems, sugar blocks, turmeric powder, grass stems and importantly a small bottle or bottles of water) (Arnold 2021:313–314). The softened llama fat offered is compared to a blood offering. The fat also alludes to the refinement of minerals in the mines of this mountainous region (Dransart 2022; Gose 1986, 2018:489), while the white and yellow ground maize offered reiterates this comparison. Of all the minerals in the Andes, gold and silver are the most valued, and compared to the Sun and the Moon. So the yellow and white maize offerings embody a herding family’s tribute to the mountain of these lifegiving substances. The vivifying power of the llama’s red sacrificial blood and the whiteness of its visceral fat, reiterate the substantiality of these offerings to the Herder Mountain and the Virgin Earth. The idea is that the fetid emanations from the decomposing carcass, together with the offerings inside the mountain “box,” will gradually transform into dark rainclouds that will rise from the mountain to release the next cycle of rains. These rains, in turn, will green the dry pastures on the mountainsides to feed a new generation of young animals, who will offer up their meaty and fatty layers to feed the families who live around the foot of the Guardian Mountain. Note that the burial of the sacrificial offering implies an additional notion of clothing the animal bones in a new layer of ritual ingredients that will transform into the new green pastures of the year ahead, and hence the meat and fatty coverings of a new generation of herd animals. This in turn will feed the hunger of humans that herd there. This part of the cycle is under the charge of the Virgin Earth, and Doña María insisted it is the women of the place who are charged in their herding activities with “wrapping” the animals in these generous layers of meat and fat. This notion of wrapping or clothing applies to other domains. Herders like Doña María watch out for baby animals on the hillsides, then sing to them and wrap them in sound and weavings, as they carry them down to integrate into the household corrals. The ritual language uttered during these proceedings articulates each ritual act with the wider ecological cycles incorporated into their range of efficacy. Above all,

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the polysemic Aymara term ch’iwu (equivalent to the Quechua llanthu) is repeated in different contexts. In ordinary parlance, ch’iwu means “shadow.” But here ch’iwu refers initially to the cooked meat of the sacrificed animal distributed to the participants at the family banquet. Then ch’iwu is the term spoken aloud while the participants chew a round of coca leaves after eating, to record the meat granted to them by the Mountain Guardian. Then once the family group and ritual specialist reach the offering place on the Guardian Mountain, ch’iwu describes the wrapping of coca leaves around the reconstituted skeleton, offered in the family “box” or “stomach” together with other ritual ingredients. So, in the whole ritual sequence, the term ch’iwu captures the transformations of the meat of the sacrificed animal, first as the coca leaves wrapped around its skeleton in the offering pit, then as the dense shadowy rainclouds that, with rainfall, generate the new covering of green pastures in the territory under the domain of the Guardian Mountain, and finally in the fresh green pastures that feed young herd animals and produce their new meat and fat wrappings to render food in the coming year for the humans that live there. This whole complex concerns the circulation of waters in the control and balance of the local ecosystems (cf. Bugallo 2015:109), but goes beyond this in the recreation of life itself, embodied in this complex cycle of commensality, clothing and mutual care. Note, though, that the ecological cycles implicated in the reciprocal pact between sky gods and high mountains, and thence between the Mountain Guardians and the humans under their charge, have an additional predatory aspect. The women of the family cannot accompany the male family members to inter the bones of the sacrificial offering. This ritual act is considered particularly dangerous, and the participants must not look back as they leave the offering place. The offering is to be consumed by the animal herder (awatiri) of the Guardian Mountain, perceived as a puma or other feline that could also consume any human still present at the site (cf. Bugallo 2015:502). This is the reason given why women should not approach these ritual places. Felines are considered the animal herders par excellence in many regions of the south-central Andes (Dransart 2002:28, 92), today in ethnographic settings, and in rock art from the distant past (Dransart 2002:193–194, Fig. 7.19, 237). These predators are considered the mountain’s true “herders” (awatiri) that protect the herd animals if they have been given the right offerings in their proper moment, and they are remembered regularly in rituals when bittermint is burned. The Qaqachakas often mention how animals have been found as dry cadavers at the foot of cliff faces, with their blood sucked out, and they blame these mountain herders, who they call “tan poncho and tan mantle” (paqu punchu and paqu awayu), male and female, referring to wild cats (titi michi) that have not been duly respected. Sometimes these beings push the animals over the cliffs, before sucking out their blood. This emphasis in sucking out the blood seems to refer to the powerful breath felines are thought to possess; when they grip the throat of a herd animal, their breath alone is considered sufficient to kill it, yet the body is not maimed. It is as if the fetid breath from the decomposing carcass that will gradually release the rains, embodies that of the feline predator that consumed the offering. The idea that felines are the true

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herders of the animals echoes those of other societies where these apex predators are admired as they keep the animals healthy. The predatory figure of the feline, associated with the moon, the rains and the rainbow, is regarded as a herder at the bid of the Virgin Earth and the Mountain Guardians, but with this lurking danger of vengeance toward the animals and their human owners if they have not been rendered their due. Besides this relationship between herd animals and felines, with their celestial associations, there is the idea that the annual birthing of the camelids coincides with the precession toward the horizon of the celestial Mother Llama suckling her young. The camelid marking and the llama mating ceremonies are also accompanied by celestial observations from the high mountains of the place, of Venus (Achach warawara), the Eyes of the Llama (Qarwa nayra, as Alpha or Beta Centaurii in the Southern Cross), and the Pleiades (Qutu), stars thought to be reborn on these occasions, as they emerge from the dark lakes inside the high mountains to appear above their peaks (Arnold and Espejo 2007:312–313). In the early colonial period, similar celestial associations with the animal herds were noted by Polo de Ondegardo, who states how the Inkas thought every species had a particular guardian star in the heavens, charged with that animal’s procreation and increase (Polo de Ondegardo 1965:1–53). The Jesuit friar Bernabé Cobo, too, reports how, for the Inkas, the Pleiades star cluster preserved all animal life (Cobo 1990).

Lexical Clues to the Moral Imperatives Driven by Human– Mountain Interrelations: qama and qurpa What common threads in these ideas link the notions of reciprocity and predation in human–mountain relations and underlie the moral imperatives behind the ideas and ritual norms that influence human behavior? One clue comes from a common Aymara and Quechua term, qama, sometimes written as kama, which, like ch’iwu, is polysemic and a key to understand the reciprocal pact and interrelations established between humans and mountains. The historical meanings of this term, written as cama or camac in Quechua, has been explored in contexts such as that of the Rites and Tradicions of Huarochiri, the colonial work already mentioned from the early seventeenth century, probably written by speakers of a local Aymara variant in the sierra north of Lima, about their customs. The analysis of this historical text by Godenzzi and Vengoa suggests that this term implies two related concepts: one of potential efficacy, and one of orientation toward a specific end (Godenzzi and Vengoa 1998:75). Gerald Taylor, too, suggests that, in practice, the term kama refers to everything that possesses a function or end, and that becomes animated so that this function or end can be realized: whether fields, mountains, rocks or among men (Taylor 1976:234). Cama here refers in a broad sense to the transmission of vital energy, where something potentially fertile becomes fertilized and animated to produce, through a process of

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mutual animation (Godenzzi and Vengoa 1998:75). For their part, Godenzzi and Vengoa explain how humans solicit this animating force from their gods or their mountain guardians, by giving prayers, payments (pago) and sacrificial offerings of food and drink to fortify them, as well as contributing their own vital force in working the earth and caring for the animals. In return, these powerful beings provide humans with health and well-being, protection and fertility, and the food provided from abundant harvests and animals. For Godenzzi and Vengoa, these kinds of relations constituted an economy driven by the reciprocal animation of the world. A cursory glance at colonial Quechua vocabularies reveals further meanings of the term kama. González Holguín’s Quechua vocabulary of 1608 (1952:46–47) includes other meanings that refer to physical work: camay is a work task, while cama is a grouping such as of men acting together, and camaycamalla can indicate the apportionment of a work task according to someone’s ability. Yet, other meanings have more juridical aspects, whereby cama can refer to an agreement according to someone’s judgment, the judgment of a person by God or a decision about what is just or true. This sphere of moral responsibility is echoed by its counterpart, as cama can also indicate a sin, lack or a burden of guilt, perhaps of not having accomplishing certain obligations. In a contemporary setting, too, qama or kama in the Andean languages have some of the same meanings, which clarify the nature of the differences between reciprocal relations and those of predation. In Quechua, kama refers to an “obligation,” as well as the power to demand its obeisance by a collectivity. The power to demand this obeisance seems to be expressed in the associated verb kamaykuy: “to menace with a punch” (Lara 1978:101). This sense of obligation can also refer to the quota of any one individual in a collective task, or in the sharing of this task equally, in the verb kamanakuy (Lara 1978:100). Kamachakuy can refer to taking upon oneself the responsibility for this obligation, or for holding a certain office. And, as in the colonial definitions, kama can define a male or female collectivity (Lara 1978:101). Contemporary Aymara echoes the historical emphasis of qama to mean life itself, as in the expression Uka jakañ wirapï qamaxa: “That life meant for living is qama.” However, qama also refers quite specifically to the offerings made every three years at the beginning of August to the Mountain Guardians, in their role as Father Qama (Qama Awki), and to the Virgin Earth, as Mother Qama (Qama Tayka). In this context, sometimes the term qama is combined with that for “luck,” surti, as qamasurti. But qama alone refers in this broad sense to achieving luck and plenty as a result of having carried out previous ritual tasks, and when things have been “tied” beforehand into their proper place. Luck in this Andean sense alludes to the rains that result from having sacrificed an animal offering. A person who has achieved plenty in this way is regarded as qamani: “having qama.” Again the ambiguous nature of the Guardian Mountains and the Virgin Earth is expressed by their having “two hearts,” one of which can provide while the other can punish. Only if there are adequate offerings will the mountain beings respond by granting things (in their role as Suma Qamawa Awki).

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In another broad sense, qama in Aymara refers to the main trunk of the body, above all the stomach, called “caja,” as in the case of the burial site on the Guardian Mountain. Within the body, qama refers to that which breathes (samskixa), when mention is made of the way the Virgin Earth or Pachamama makes the clouds “breathe” (qamayani) to bring on the rains. Women in particular make offerings to the Virgin Earth of red fiber (wila t’arwa), coca leaves and meat (ch’iwu) to persuade her to renew the pastures on the hillsides with her rains each year. As in historical contexts, everything is thought to have qama, but its location is more defined here, in the central part of the body, in the stomach. In the gendered aspects of these ideas, men are said to express the power of their qama through their spiritedness (animu or ajayu) as individuals, particularly their power to frighten another being though a show of courage (qamasa). Qamasiñiwa means “one who has courage.” Qama can also refers to a man’s luck, whether in battle or in his ability to hunt or rear animals. Women, on the other hand, are charged with cycling qama in a more collective sense, through their preparation of food (willjaña) to fill the stomachs of their families and of everyone present when there are fiestas. Importantly, for a woman, her qama refers to her sexual rhythms and her reproductive potential and outcomes. Her qama refers specifically to her flow of menstrual blood. During her monthly periods, said to coincide with the dark of the moon or sometimes the full moon, the expression qamakiw saraski means “just her blood is flowing.” Adult women are considered most fertile when this blood first appears and when it is about to disappear, and this is when she should have sexual relations if she wants to get pregnant. Then, when a woman gives birth, her preordained tendency to have an easy or difficult delivery is described as her kamiri (or kamiru). Each woman is said to have her own particular tendency in this (Kamirin kamirini). She may have the normal tendency of a person, jaqi kamiri, and have some difficulty, but if she has the tendency of a wild animal such as a vicuña, wari kamiru, she will give birth effortlessly up in the hills, and have the ability to walk back home afterward. If she has the tendency of a reared animal, uywa kamiri, then she will age faster than a woman with a person’s tendency, and she could have regular affairs with men other than her husband. So the range of meanings of qama or kamiri for a woman regulate her sexual life, her blood flow and her predisposition for an easy or more difficult childbirth. These ideas about qama (or kama) begin to articulate the alternative domains of reciprocity and predation in the ambit of human–mountain relations, and to unravel the wider moral obligations set into motion in each sphere of activity. Reciprocal care here is linked more to the female domain, and expressed through feeding and the provision of wealth in food products and animals acquired through the luck of having accomplished the right offerings at the proper time. Associated ideas concerning mutual rearing by clothing and wrapping, whether through offerings or by ensuring the provision of new meaty and fleecy layers on the herd animals, are again in women’s hands. The ideas about qama emphasize mutuality and these more collective aspects of reciprocity. In a more corporeal ambit, when women’s bodies are regarded as fertile when they have their blood flow, women as a group are

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compared to the Virgin Earth during her own “Time of Year” (Timpun marani), when the heavy rains make the soil run with red waters. At an even broader level, women’s bodies are compared to that of the great Mother Llama in the sky, which gives birth to the new herd animals in the rainy season, around December (Arnold and Yapita 2001:196–199). As a corollary to this female collectivity are the more predatory aspects linked to male courage, prowess, spiritedness and luck, and to male sexuality and the release of male seed to make women pregnant. Moreover, a vital link between these two domains is mediated through the body perceived as qama, whether as the “stomach” (caja) that receives food provided by the Guardian Mountains, or as the “belly” that releases blood flow, becomes fertile like the rains, and when combined with male seed brings forth children. The regular offering in the mountain’s “belly” to the Virgin Earth of a llama fetus, seems to confirm this theme of a fertile belly that doubles as a “stomach” to receive food offerings. Although the set of male obligations assumes a lesser sense of collectivity than those of female obligations, nevertheless in Qaqachaka men are required to carry out certain obligations toward the wider collectivity. These are evident in the social rules regarding bride service. Although marriage nowadays tends to be patri-virilocal, after marriage a new groom is expected to provide food sustenance, and carry out heavy tasks, for his parents in-laws, during a period of two weeks, but much longer in the past. During this time, he must prove his prowess and skills in sacrificing animals, and then butchering them ready for the distribution of the meat, which he displays in the ceremony of “cutting the heads” (p’iq kachiyaña) (Arnold and Yapita 2006:128).

Alimentary Exogamy in the Origins of These Ideas The wider implications of these moral obligations, set in motion through human– mountain interrelations, calls to mind the classic anthropological complex of “exogamy.” This too concerns marriage rules and the norms of sexual relations and exchange obligations between groups, on the one hand, and the social norms of the animal hunt, butchery, and the redistribution of the resulting meat conducted through the social rules of commensality, on the other. These norms of animal sacrifice and the redistribution of the sacrificial meat have been defined as “alimentary exogamy” by some French anthropologists (Makarius and Makarius 1961; Testart 1978, 1985, 1986), and as the “own kill rule” by the British anthropologist Chris Knight (1991: cap. 3). Malinowski (1913:290) called this complex the “custom of a communal division of prey.” These norms stress that when a hunter kills an animal, the hunter himself is prohibited from eating his own prey, because this would infringe the rules of sociability and reciprocity that bind human groups through their ties of exogamy. As a general rule, the hunter must offer his prey to the family of his partner after having put aside, at the site of the kill, a vital part of the game animal as an offering to the Master of the Animals (or his equivalent

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such as the Mountain Guardians) in recompense for having killed an animal from his domain. In the Andean ethnographic evidence, this norm applies equally to male herders, who must follow certain norms in the processes of killing and butchering a herd animal, including the casting aside of the gall bladder and viscera, before it can be handed over to his wife to cook (Pazzarelli 2017:137–138). These norms of meat processing and distribution practiced by male herders in the southern Andes follow hunting rules quite closely, and the norms of bride service make these rules even more explicit. Note that Chris Knight’s work on the “own kill rule” situates this complex of practices as the basis of early human patterns of behavior concerning reciprocal exchanges between groups, and between men and women. More recently, Knight and Lewis (in press) are linking these practices to much wider moral obligations and ethical issues concerning personal behavior within these norms, although they do not link these norms specifically to resource management. In addition, Knight adds to this complex a sense of temporality, with his argument that the hunt tends to take place at the dark of the moon and the feasting on the meat at the full moon. Ian Watt’s work on African hunter gatherer societies, such as the Khoisan, confirms this tendency in a contemporary setting (Watts 2005). Likewise, in the case of Qaqachaka, offerings are made to the Mountain Guardians at the dark of the moon. Historical evidence suggests that the Inkas followed this lunar rhythm in warfare, equivalent to a hunt but this time for human prey (Murra 1975:140). Another idea shared by many groups throughout the world is that if the hunter were to eat his own prey, he would lose his luck in hunting other animals. As we saw, a man’s “luck” is a key concept in the Andes too (cf. Pazzarelli 2017:137, 146). Among hunters in South America, this complex has been widely illustrated by Baldus (1952) among various groups in Brazil, and among the Siriono in eastern Bolivia. Among the Guayaki of eastern Paraguay (according to Clastres 1972), this notion of good-luck is called pana, while pane is the anguish a hunter feels if he eats his prey and loses his luck. Among the Bororo of Brazil, according to Chris Crocker (1985:41 ff.), the term bope refers to the spirits of certain animals of prey with which the hunter himself identifies, and to which he must offer a part of the animal before eating the rest. He must also take care not to eat the blood of these animals, so the meat must be boiled sufficiently to remove any evidence of this blood (Crocker 1985:41–42), in alimentary rules similar to those of the extended cooking in Andean feasts after an animal sacrifice (Arnold 2016:126; Bugallo 2015; Pazzarelli 2014). This would suggest that the male head of a herding family, in an Andean context, accomplishes the same norms of alimentary exogamy as a hunter, both at the moment of killing the animal, and by offering the reconstituted bones from the family feast as an offering in the mountain “boxes,” and hence to the Master of the Animals. An alternative is the customary offering of the animal liver to the felines who might prowl around a site with a fresh carcass. Or does the Andean herder, in comparison with the hunter, assume the role of the Master of the Animals at the moment of sacrifice, thus turning an act of the hunt into a sacrificial act, in which case the Master of the Animals is in reality sacrificing one of his own animals?

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In practice, the redistributive impulse at the basis of these rites illustrates the moral obligations that sustain the relations between humans and nonhumans. Rearing mutually between humans and mountains, as uywasiña, refers especially to relations of kinship and descent between these beings. Added to this, as in the lowlands, this sense of rearing mutually has the wider meaning of bringing up an animal as a pet (uywa). However, by participating in relations of exchange between groups of affines (of meat and other kinds of food, as well as sexual activities), or between humans, mountains, animals and plants, the concept of “rearing mutually” is complemented by that of “exchanging things.” Here, from an Aymara perspective, the concept of uywaña (“to rear or nurture”) is complemented by that of ayniña (“to act reciprocally”) and kutiyaña (“to exchange”), through giving meat, bones and other elements according to the norms of “offering” (liwaña or waxt’aña), in the field of moral obligations (costumbre) that operates between the beings of a specific territory, and between kin and potential affines. In the context of northwest Argentina, Bugallo (2015:82) calls these interrelations “culinary reciprocity.” Bugallo also points out that the moral obligation at the basis of these reciprocal acts goes much further than these immediate ritual contexts, to include the norms of economic interchange of diverse products between different ecological zones, and the sense of what is “just” in the prices established in regional fairs where these exchanges take place (2015:482). This implies that the sphere of biocultural systems, of which human–mountain relations are a part, extend outward into the sphere of moral obligations, and hence into these regional norms of economic life. Like qama, the Andean term qurpa is another key indicator of the extensive web of moral obligations triggered by the dual domains of reciprocity and predation. In Quechua, according to González Holguín’s early colonial vocabulary (1952 [1608]:69–70), qurpa (written ccorpa) refers in general to a reciprocal arrangement concerning a guest, a pilgrim given hospitality or a person who has guests. The verb ccorpachani means “to give hospitality,” whereas ccorpachaqueyoc means having someone to lodge you. In modern-day northwest Argentina, influenced by Quechua in the past, the feast after an animal sacrifice is called specifically qurpachada. In her work in the community of Abralaite, Bugallo finds the meaning of qurpachada in Aymara and Quechua verbs for “sheltering” or “feeding” someone, with a sense of a reciprocal obligation in retribution for something, such as prior participation in agricultural and herding tasks during the year (Bugallo 2015:42). This meaning is reiterated in the Quechua verb qurpaquy, which means “to give” combined with the “movement toward” someone or something, as if to reinforce this sense of prior obligation. An additional Aymara meaning of qurpa, which Bugallo does not mention, is as a “boundary marker” for a territory and its herding lands, as it was in the colonial period (Bertonio 1984 [1612] II:53). This would extend the influence of the qurpachada sacrificial feast to the whole territory with its resources managed by highland families, from their houses to their cultivated lands, and on to the mountains, springs and pastures nearby. During the qurpachada feast in Argentina, highland families offer the earth coca leaves and a sprinkling of chicha (maize beer), making a special point of offering these in the cultivated fields (Bugallo

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2015:45). Bugallo notes that the qurpachada in the Jujuy puna is a family ritual directed by the household owners (husband and wife), and not by a ritual specialist. The norms for lodging people (still known as qurpa) during their travels to other zones are another example of this web of hospitality, as is the widely disseminated idea among present day highland populations that the earth is the medium for living and the source of work (Bugallo 2015:430, 482). Such associations of ideas are present in other parts of the world. Chittenden comments how, in Ancient Greece, Hermes as the Master of the Animals was equally the god of travelers, and how travelers were guided by the cairns set up in wild places to mark the boundaries between hunting territories (Chittenden 1947:114).

Closing Remarks on Bridging Reciprocity and Predation This exploration of the ideas and practices around the Animal Gamekeepers in the south-central Andes aimed to unravel how certain powerful moral obligations that drive human behavior toward caring for the resources of their surroundings are embedded within the human interrelationships with these beings. Two key categories within this body of ideas were identified: that of reciprocal relations, on the one hand, and predation, ownership and mastery, on the other. At one level, these produce the widespread ambiguity regarding the Animal Gamekeepers, that they can be generous or else punishing. In the Andes, the first set of far-reaching norms includes conviviality, commensality, reciprocal exchanges, and mutual care and protection. These guide the moral acts of humans centered in the domains of reciprocal activities, defined by the Andean terms uywasiña, to rear mutually, qama, as life force, and generative and reproductive power, and qurpa, which concerns the norms of commensality and the sphere of just exchanges. In each case, the key ambits of action, to which these semantic spheres refer, concern human–mountain exchanges, above all the periodic offerings of animal sacrifice. It is common for older people to comment that once young persons abandon these customs, the web of relations in Andean society, too, breaks down. However, allusions to reciprocal pacts are not enough to explain the power that drove humans to accomplish these moral obligations in the recent past, whether in reciprocal acts among human communities, between humans and animals, or between humans and their Mountain Guardians, as regional instances of the Master of the Animals. The ethnographic data presented here shows how the power to accomplish these moral obligations is driven in parallel by the fears induced by acts of predation and vengeance on the part of these Masters of the regional resources, and the nonhuman personages (above all the felines) under their control, were the customs of offering sacrifices to be ignored. This would confirm the lowland proposition that recognizing the mastery and ownership on the part of the Masters of the Animals might be an important link between the two key notions of predation and commensality (Allard 2019:126).

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In a lowland context, Fausto (2008:6) identifies a certain logic underlying how human actors have created these “masters” and “owners” of all the resources within their domain (animal, vegetable, mineral, and human), as the real agents that ensure the continuity of life in the region, but only if they receive adequate sacrificial offerings. Often perceived in a person-like image, the predominant characteristics of this creation are of a singular, yet collective being, which absorbs the multiplicity of individual actors and their acts, even entire ecosystems, within itself. It is a human representation of collectivity and group subjectivity, sensu Durkheim, and this is what concedes to this figure its predatory power. However, while this predatory powerful being is certainly a key figure that structures human behavior, fearful of its vengeance if the appropriate human actions have not been fulfilled, I wanted to go beyond an emphasis on the management of mountain resources in animals and plants to explore the wider moral obligations at play among human actors in this sphere of influence. In this context, it is as if the human obligation to sacrifice offerings to the mountain guardians serves as the central tenet, while deriving from this are countless lesser obligations, all dependent upon one another. These include a wide gamut of economic exchanges, including those of hospitality and commensality, norms of hunting and herding, respect toward animals and other humans, and the distribution of prey. They also involve notions of the body, collective notions of bellies and stomachs to be filled, the norms of sexual relations, and male and female conduct as groups. This sphere of moral obligations involves archaic juridical notions that define for the human actors the degree of truth and justice in these transactions, as well as implicating the ethical attitudes of these human actors toward these activities, and in their dealings with other life forms. This would imply that appealing to this complex of pre-existing moral obligations centered on human–Gamekeeper relations might be a useful approach in the management of sustainable harvesting practices among indigenous populations today. That dealings between humans and mountains could entail such an immense scope of human activity implies that the origins of these ideas were once much more widely distributed across the globe. It also suggests that the Andean counterparts of similar ideas found across the planet are but one facet of wider and enduring human customs. It would imply that the human recasting of the high mountains in the Andes as the Animal Masters and Gamekeepers was a regional historical necessity, long before the colonial period. Acknowledgments I acknowledge the tremendous support in fieldwork by Juan de Dios Yapita, which included long conversations with Doña María Ayca Llanque and Don Domingo Jiménez, whose lives and ideas I record here.

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Przytomska-La Civita, Anna. 2019. Apus: Non-human persons in the ontology of the Q’eros from the Cordillera Vilcanota (Peru). Etnografia. Praktyki, Teorie, Doświadczenia 5: 35–63. https:// doi.org/10.26881/etno.2019.5.03. Ramírez, Susan E. 2005. To feed and be fed: The cosmological bases of authority and identity in the Andes. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Rappaport, Roy A. 1968. Pigs for the ancestors: Ritual in the ecology of a New Guinea people. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo. 1971. Amazonian cosmos: The sexual and religious symbolism of the Tukano Indians. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. ———. 1996. The forest within: The worldview of the Tukano Amazonian Indians. Dartington: Themis Books. Rivera Andia, Juan Javier. 2003. La fiesta del ganado en el valle de Chancay (1962-2002). Religion y ritual en los Andes: etnografia, documentos ineditos e interpretacion. Lima: Fondo Editorial PUCP. Salas Carreño, Guillermo. 2017. Mining and the living materiality of mountains in Andean societies. Journal of Material Culture 22 (2): 133–150. Salvucci, Daniela. 2015. Intimacy and danger. Ritual practices and environmental relations in northern Andean Argentina. Indiana 32: 65–84. Sax, Marieka. 2011. An ethnography of feeding, perception and place in the Peruvian Andes (where hungry spirits bring illness and wellbeing). Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. ———. 2019. Southern sacrifice and northern sorcery: Mountain spirits and Encantos in the Peruvian Andes. In Non-humans in Amerindian South America. Ethnographies of indigenous cosmologies, rituals and songs, ed. Juan Javier Rivera Andía, 97–125. New York and Oxford: Berghahn. Shapero, Joshua A. 2019. Possessive places: Spatial routines and glacier oracles in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca. Ethnos 84: 615–641. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2017.1383501. Smith, Stan C. 2012. Generative landscapes. The step mountain motif in Tiwanaku iconography. Ancient America 12: 1–69. Stearman, A. 1990. The effects of settler incursion on fish and game resources of the Yuquí. Human Organization 49: 373–385. Stolze Lima, Tânia. 1999. The two and its many: Reflections on Perspectivism in a Tupi cosmology. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 64: 107–131. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.1999. 9981592. Taylor, Gerald. 1976. Camay, camac et camasca dans le manuscrit de Huarochiri. Journal de la Société des Américanistes 63: 231–244. Testart, Alain. 1978. Des classifications dualistes en Australie. Lille: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Université de Lille. ———. 1985. Le communisme primitif. Paris: Editions de Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. ———. 1986. Essai sur les fondements de la division sexuelle du travail chez les chasseurscueilleurs. Paris: Editions de 1‘École des Haute Études en Sciences Sociales. Thomas, Evert, Ina Vandebroek, Patrick Van Damme, Lucio Semo, and Zacaria Noza. 2009. Susto etiology and treatment according to Bolivian Trinitario people: A “masters of the animal species” phenomenon. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, International Journal for the Analysis of Health 23 (3): 298–319. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1387.2009.01065.x. Valderrama, Ricardo, and Carmen Escalante. 2011. Montañas sagradas y rituales en los Andes. Crónicas Urbanas (Cusco) 16: 43–62. Van Kessel, Juan. 1980. Holocausto al progreso: los aymaras de Tarapacá. Amsterdam: Centro de Estudios y Documentación Latinoamericanos. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 2012. Cosmological perspectivism in Amazonia and elsewhere. Hau Masterclass Series 1. https://haubooks.org/cosmological-perspectivism-in-amazonia/.

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Watts, Ian. 2005. Time too grows on the moon’: Some evidence for Knight’s theory of a human universal. In The qualities of time, ed. W. James and D. Mills, 95–118. Oxford and New York: Berg. Weismantel, Mary. 1998. Viñachina: Hacer guaguas en Zumbagua, Ecuador. In Gente de Carne y Hueso. Las tramas de parentesco en los Andes, ed. Denise Y. Arnold, 83–96. La Paz, Bolivia, and St. Andrews, Scotland: ILCA and CIASE.

Professor Denise Y. Arnold is the Anthropological Research Director at the Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara, La Paz, Bolivia, and a Senior Research Fellow (Hons.) at University College London. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork mainly among the Aymara speakers of Qaqachaka marka and ayllus in highland Bolivia. Current research interests include: Andean indigenous peoples, Andean-Amazonian interactions, Andean textiles, gamekeepers and resource use, culture change, social movements, and research methodologies.

Chapter 16

Supernatural Gamekeepers: Conclusions from an Archaeological Perspective Benjamin Smith

Abstract The papers in the volume bring together our collective and current understanding of Supernatural Gamekeepers. Many have used archaeological data to assess the antiquity of contemporary or historically recorded beliefs and traditions. In this concluding chapter, I review this archaeological evidence and consider how far back we can chart the origins of Supernatural Gamekeepers in different regions. I conclude that belief in a Supernatural Gamekeeper was a nearly universal step in the historical trajectory from early animism to deism. The implications of this are that we should be more watchful for early evidence of Supernatural Gamekeepers in future archaeological research. Keywords Supernatural gamekeepers · Animal masters · Animism · Shamanism

The Archaeology of Gamekeepers The remarkable set of original contributions brought together in this book shed light on a range of different beliefs and practices concerning Supernatural Gamekeepers today and in the past. Contributions from all continents have shown how beliefs in Supernatural Gamekeepers have, even in recent times, played an important contribution to sustaining natural diversity, but there have also been cautionary tales of places where they have not driven a conservation ethic and/or where their efficacy is being eroded by external factors (notably chapters by Århem, Dye, Chacon, and Fernández-Llamazares et al.). Many contributions also probe the history and origins of these beliefs. Various chapters consider the issue of how far back we can trace beliefs in Supernatural Gamekeepers, drawing on evidence from archaeology. More often than not, it is evidence from rock art that is discussed. In light of these

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collective contributions, I consider the implications for the origins and spread of global beliefs in Supernatural Gamekeepers.

The Origins of Supernatural Gamekeepers in Eurasia Nataliia Mykhailova focuses on a specific example of these ancient female animal helpers, the deer mother, who is found in the memories of many modern-day circumpolar peoples such as the Nganasany, Evenki, and Saami. Mykhailova argues that archaeological evidence shows the presence of this deer-mother figure stretching back at least 10,000 years and with iconography that can be found across much of Eurasia. She charts the story of how this ancient figure evolved through time, becoming Artemis in the Greek Pantheon and Cailleach in Irish Celtic beliefs. Sometimes the deer mother took on a male spouse or a male form, an example being the Saami male culture hero figure called Myandasj. She argues that the image of the zoomorphic ancestor was split into both male and female manifestations. The man deer is a cultural hero, a teacher of hunters, and a Master of Animals. While the woman deer transformed into the mother of people and deer, the guarantor of the animal’s security, fertility, and regeneration. She also grapples with the issue of what happens to the deer mother during the transition from a hunting and gathering way of life to an agricultural/pastoralist economy. She argues that the figure changed into a patron of the harvest and human fertility. In Esther Jacobson-Tepfer’s fascinating review of North Asian evidence, she examines the iconography of this region’s rock art and its associated excavations. She explains how human-animal rock art depictions, such as horned figures, have increasingly been interpreted as shamans, either wearing shamanic regalia of a kind similar to that recorded ethnographically in Siberia or as images of shamanic transformatory visions. She accepts the possibility that this reading is correct for the art produced in more recent centuries but cautions that there is no direct archaeological evidence of these kinds of shamanic beliefs and practices prior to the Iron Age in North Asia. For example, the shamanic drum is crucial in the ethnographically recorded shamanic traditions of this area, yet there are no representations of anything identifiable as a drum before the Iron Age. She is therefore inclined to read the pre-Iron Age rock art images of human-animal and horned figures as supernatural beings and animal helpers. She notes that almost all of the early human–animal images are female, and so she concludes that across prehistoric South Siberia and mountainous northern Mongolia, there existed one or more ancient female beings who functioned as animal helpers or adjudicators of human fate. Diana Stein cautions that the Old World Master of Animals is thought of as more of a human champion of wildlife than an animal guardian of the game world. In the Near East, she traces the iconography of the Master of Animals back at least as far as representations in the proto-urban Ubaid era in the seventh millennium BP. The

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figure can take multiple human–animal forms, sometimes drawing on the characteristics of foxes, felines, and aurochs. She argues that, among the pre-farming hunter-gatherers of the Near East, there were probably two Masters of Animals: a supernatural Master and a human Master. Given the varied gendered nature of these “Masters,” as seen above, I prefer to use the more gender-neutral word-“Gamekeeper” for both types. In her view, both Gamekeeper variants survived through the Neolithic and can be seen at both the famous sites of Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük. She argues that the Human Gamekeeper was typically a shaman, or similar, who mediated between the human, animal, and spirit worlds to help locate game animals, increase animal fertility, and maintain a balance with nature. Using burial data, she argues that we can use archaeological evidence to chart such Near Eastern shaman figures back to at least the middle Epi-Palaeolithic and Geometric Kebaran periods (c. 17,700–15,750 BP). Here she uses the evidence from a human– fox burial. A better-known but slightly later example is from the burial of an elderly crippled woman at Hilazon Tachtit, a late Natufian cave site (c. 12,000 BP), located in western Galilee. The crippled woman was found alongside a rich array of animal body parts. According to Stein, the social power of the Human Gamekeeper figure changed during the Neolithic as the shamans took advantage of their positions and became shaman-healers and eventually priests and kings. Alongside this growing social hierarchization and complexity, Stein notes that there was hierarchization in divine beliefs, which, at this time, expanded rapidly into the complex pantheon of gods that we know from the early Eurasian historical records. So, for Stein, the Supernatural Gamekeeper and the shaman Gamekeeper are not mutually exclusive, at least in the context of the Near East. The two can operate together, with the shaman Gamekeeper mediating relations with the Supernatural Gamekeeper, as noted in many of the ethnographies cited in this volume. This means that it may well prove difficult to discriminate between these two figures in ancient rock art and other iconography. Both might be shown in similar ways, with parthuman and part-animal features. This difficulty of using rock art to chart the antiquity of the Supernatural Gamekeeper will not be restricted only to the Near East. Peoples et al. (2016) conducted a global study of 33 ethnographically recorded hunter-gatherer societies. They conclude that Edward Burnett Tylor (1871) was correct when he suggested that animism was the earliest trait of human religion. In their study, animism was present in every one of their sampled hunter-gatherer societies, and they, therefore, argued that it was probably universal among early hunter-gatherer societies. Shamanism was common (79%) but not always present, including in societies like the central African Pygmies and Aboriginal Australians, where the lack of shamanism is unlikely to be a product of recent cultural contact. Peoples et al. (2016) see shamanism as a widespread but probably not universal trait of early hunter-gatherer religions. They support Rossano’s (2009) view that shamanism was necessarily a precursor to the kind of ancestor veneration we see in the Neolithic societies of the Near East (see Lewis-Williams and Pearce 2011). Stein and Jacobson-Tepfer could therefore both be correct in their interpretation that in different regions of Eurasia, early art shows different emphases on Supernatural

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Gamekeepers and/or shaman Gamekeepers. And, in societies that have both Supernatural Gamekeepers and Human Gamekeepers, it cannot be assumed that both will be depicted in rock art. The Bushman (or San) rock art of southern Africa provides a case in point.

Seeing Gamekeepers in Ancient Art As described by Robert Hitchcock in this volume, almost all ethnographically recorded Bushman language groups have both human controllers of the game and a Supernatural Gamekeeper. The Human Gamekeepers are ritual specialists who gain and operate their powers in trance states and visions. Most researchers in southern Africa term these specialists “shamans,” but given that both men and women and up to as many as 30% of the population can be ritual specialists, researchers have noted that this is a very different form of “shaman” to that known from Eurasia and the Americas, and some have questioned whether the term is appropriate (Solomon 2011:111). The Bushman terms for their shamans, such as n/ um-k”au and !gi:xa, literally mean possessors or controllers of spiritual potency. They can use this power to heal, control the weather, and control game animals (e.g., see McGranaghan and Challis 2016). Almost all recorded Bushman language groups have a Great God and a Lesser God (Barnard 1992). Among the Ju/‘hoansi, the Great or High God is called ≠Gao N!a, and the Lesser God or deity is called //Gauwa (Marshall 1999). While the house of the Great God is surrounded by spirit animals and this God is the ultimate source of potency, it is the lesser God who is closest to a Supernatural Gamekeeper (Guenther 1999:62–63; Silberbauer 1965:95). The Great God is a distant God and plays little direct role in the lives of the living. It is the Lesser God who mediates with the living. For example, he is the one who brings potency from the Great God and delivers it into the spine of the shaman (e.g., Marshall 1999:8). He is a trickster and a shape-shifter. He takes on many animal forms and often plays tricks to thwart game hunters. He must be appeased after an animal is killed, particularly if it is a large and important animal, such as an eland (Guenther 1999; Bleek 1924:12). Among the /Xam Bushmen, he is called /Kaggen, literally meaning Praying Mantis, but in /Xam myths, he takes on many different animal forms. The Bushmen of southern Africa, therefore, provide an interesting case study in which to examine how far back in time archaeologists can trace ethnographically known examples of Supernatural Gamekeepers. The truth is, it is not very far. While Bushman rock art is overwhelmingly “religious” in nature (Lewis-Williams 2019), it contains few, if any, diagnostic images of the Great God or the lesser God, the trickster. David Lewis-Williams once speculated that perhaps these Gods were simply too powerful and too dangerous to be depicted (Lewis-Williams personal communication 2005). Certainly, there are many part-human and part-animal images in rock art. These figures are termed therianthropes in southern Africa. Researchers

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have argued, to my mind convincingly, that the postures, associations, and accouterments of therianthropes confirm that they are dominantly depictions of transformed shamans (e.g., Lewis-Williams 1998, 2006). In southern Africa, the rock art therefore depicts Human Gamekeepers but, seemingly, not Supernatural Gamekeeper. To add to the complexity, Bushman spirits of the dead also engage in trance dances, so the human–animal figures in rock art might also depict transformed spirits of the dead (Challis 2005:12; Jolly 2002; Solomon 1997). And, the Bushmen believe in an Early Time after God created the world and the animals, when people were animals. Bushmen myths are largely set within this Early Time. Part-human and part-animal figures in rock art could therefore also potentially represent animal– people from the Early Time (Challis 2005:12; Jolly 2002; Solomon 1997). A simple correlation between animal–human figures and Supernatural Gamekeepers is therefore problematic in the rock art of southern Africa, a place where we have a detailed ethnographic understanding. I suspect that the situation will have been similarly complex in Eurasia and other places, but in these areas, we have lost the depth of ethnographic understanding to know of this complexity (Davidson 2019). The example of the Bushmen of southern Africa is therefore a cautionary tale. The capacity of archaeologists to see the origins of Supernatural Gamekeepers may be limited.

Conclusions That said, this volume has charted the extraordinarily widespread nature of Supernatural Gamekeepers, and if we accept the method of Peoples and his colleagues (2016), it seems likely that the development of a belief in a Supernatural Gamekeeper was a nearly universal step in the historical trajectory from early animism to deism. We should therefore be more watchful for early evidence of Supernatural Gamekeepers in future archaeological research. Our capacity to see shaman Gamekeepers may be better than their Supernatural counterparts because of the likelihood that these individuals will have left a broad range of intertwining material evidence (Jordan 2003), but learning more about these Human Gamekeepers can also shed light on their Supernatural counterparts. As we learn more of the specific regional characteristics of each Supernatural Gamekeeper, we may overcome our current inability to see them, following the example provided by studies of the deer mother Gamekeeper of ancient Europe in this volume (see Mykhailova and Jacobson-Tepfer in this volume) and the richly detailed ethnographically informed example of the animal master and the whales of coastal Pacific North America (see Johnson in this volume). Using a mix of sources and tacking recursively between archaeological and historical sources, we may even follow the story of these regional Gamekeepers from ancient times into the historical period, as Eppig has done so successfully in this volume. As has been ably shown by the contributions of this volume, it is likely that

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ancient rock art will hold many of the archaeological keys to unlocking this story, and it, therefore, seems likely that ethnographically informed rock art researchers have the potential to make the greatest contribution to our understanding of the ancient Supernatural Gamekeepers.

References Barnard, A. 1992. Hunters and herders of southern Africa: A comparative ethnography of the Khoisan peoples. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bleek, D.F. 1924. The mantis and his friends. Bushman folklore. Cape Town: Maskew Miller. Challis, W. 2005. ‘The men with rhebok’s heads; they tame elands and snakes’: Incorporating the rhebok antelope in the understanding of Southern African rock art. South African Archaeological Society Goodwin Series 9: 11–20. Davidson, I. 2019. Images of animals in rock art: Not just ‘good to think’. In The Oxford handbook of the archaeology and anthropology of rock art, ed. B. David and I.J. McNiven, 435–467. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Guenther, M.G. 1999. Tricksters and trancers: Bushman religion and society. Indiana: Indiana University Press. Jolly, P. 2002. Therianthropes in San Rock Art. The South African Archaeological Bulletin 57: 85–103. Jordan, P. 2003. The materiality of shamanism as a ‘world-view’: Praxis, artefacts and landscape. In The archaeology of shamanism, ed. N. Price, 99–116. London: Routledge. Lewis-Williams, J.D. 1998. Quanto?: The issue of ‘many meanings’ in southern African San rock art research. The South African Archaeological Bulletin 53: 86–97. ———. 2006. Debating rock art: Myth and ritual, theories and facts. The South African Archaeological Bulletin 61: 105–114. ———. 2019. Image-makers: The social context of a hunter-gatherer ritual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lewis-Williams, D., and D. Pearce. 2011. Inside the Neolithic mind: Consciousness, cosmos and the realm of the gods. London: Thames & Hudson. Marshall, L.J. 1999. Nyae Nyae !Kung: Belief and rites. Cambridge: Harvard University, Peabody Museum Monographs. McGranaghan, M., and S. Challis. 2016. Reconfiguring hunting magic: Southern Bushman (San) perspectives on taming and their implications for understanding rock art. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 26 (4): 579–599. Peoples, H.C., P. Duda, and F.W. Marlowe. 2016. Hunter-gatherers and the origins of religion. Human Nature 27: 261–282. Rossano, M.J. 2009. The African Interregnum: The “where,” “when,” and “why” of the evolution of religion. In The biological evolution of religious mind and behaviour, ed. E. Voland and W. Schiefenhövel, 127–141. Berlin: Springer. Silberbauer, G. 1965. Report to the government of Bechuanaland on the Bushman survey. Gaborone: Bechuanaland Government.

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Solomon, A. 1997. The myth of ritual origins? Ethnography, mythology and interpretation of San Rock Art. The South African Archaeological Bulletin 52: 3–13. ———. 2011. Writing San histories: The /Xam and ‘shamanism’ revisited. Journal of Southern African Studies 37 (1): 99–117. Tylor, E.B. 1871. Primitive culture: Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art and custom. New York: Harper.

Dr. Benjamin Smith is a Professor in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Western Australia. He has conducted archaeological investigations throughout the Africa and Australia. His research interests include hunter-gatherers, rock art, sustainable rock art tourism, and cosmology.

Chapter 17

Of Game Keepers, Opportunism, and Conservation Raymond Hames

Abstract In this collection, gamekeepers are supernatural entities that regulate wildlife hunting in a wide variety of ways. They assist the hunters in pursuit of their prey, ritual respect for the game, and the reincarnation of slain animals. In addition, broader considerations are described, such as the mutual moral obligations between hunters and the supernatural. Gamekeepers seem to be nearly universal in those societies that depend on game animals as an important part of their diet, making the topic interesting from a ideological perspective. Some of the chapters argue that gamekeepers play a role in the conservation of prey types. The major aim of this chapter is to argue against any ecological role gamekeepers play in the conservation of hunted animals by examining the widespread role of opportunistic hunting from the perspective of human behavioral ecology. I conclude that there is no evidence to support the claim that belief in gamekeepers promotes conservation. At the same time, the logic behind the widespread presence of gamekeepers and game taboos remains a mystery. Keywords Hunting · Gamekeepers · Conservation · Opportunism · Belief systems · Ritual · Amazonia · Human behavioral ecology · Sustainability

Introduction What gamekeepers or animal masters do is the focus of all the ethnographic chapters and indirectly through iconography in the archaeological contributions to this volume. Since I am an ethnographer and not well acquainted with archaeological approaches to iconography, I will restrict my remarks to the ethnographic chapters. In this volume, gamekeepers are supernatural entities who control the reproduction or replenishment of game (Hitchcock; Tepfer), establish a set of moral and reciprocal obligations between humans and resources (Arnold), regulate the conduct of hunters R. Hames (✉) University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. J. Chacon (ed.), The History and Environmental Impacts of Hunting Deities, Conflict, Environment, and Social Complexity 4, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37503-3_17

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through rewards or punishment depending on their comportment or ritual observances before or after hunting (Mykhailova; Dubey-Pathak; Dye; Hitchcock), proscribe taking game from sacred places (Århem), and allow hunters to kill particular species more easily (Mykhailova; Hitchcock). At a more general level, Chacon and Fernández-Llamazares summarize the gamekeeper literature among native Amazonians, and Arnold does so for a large number of Andean peoples. Most contributions and analyses focus on associated beliefs, rituals, and supernatural relationships from a culturological perspective. Some of the ethnographic papers seek to understand the ecological function, if any, of gamekeepers, a topic that will be my main focus here, especially as it relates to conservation and opportunism. Given that hunting is a basic food production activity, perhaps one way to contextualize gamekeepers and their roles is to expand the focus to examine the presence or absence of spirits who supernaturally regulate the control of other major food sources such as fish, gathered plants, or crops. Unfortunately, the literature seems sparse for those societies that engage in extensive foraging alongside the agriculture typical of Amazonian peoples. Through a detailed account of garden spirits among the Aguaruna Jivaro, Brown and Van Bolt (1980) note that in Amazonia, magical horticultural rites are rarely reported compared to the literature on hunting, the theme of this volume. An exception outside of Amazonia may be found in Arnold’s (in this volume) Andean survey documenting “mountain guardians” and supernatural masters and mistresses in a wide range of subsistence activities. Perhaps, following Arnold’s lead, there is more to uncover in Amazonia in relation to non-hunting subsistence domains. It is possible that there may be rich but underreported belief systems about domesticated or wild plants among many native peoples. Be that as it may, Brown and Van Bolt (1980) cite Carneiro (1970), who speculated that the presence of the supernatural in hunting may be a function of hunting’s risky and anxiety-producing nature, a relationship Malinowski (1954) noted long ago with respect to Trobriand fishing. There is psychological literature on anxiety in relation to uncertainty and risk and how it sometimes leads to ritualized behavior or culturally prescribed rituals when success in a task is beyond an individual’s complete control (Hobson et al. 2018; Lang et al. 2015). This literature shows that rituals give individuals a sense of control and efficacy. This may be especially useful in hunting when the game can sense a human’s presence as a predator and have behavioral repertoires designed to defeat a predator’s goal. Compared to hunting, garden crops are under the surer control of humans as they carefully engage in all manner of expert cultivation and care based on their traditional horticultural knowledge, and unlike game plants, plants are unable to devise counter-strategies to prevent their demise. Of course, catastrophic climatic events, insect infestations, and other unpredictable calamities can harm production and lead to uncertainty and ritual precautions. Nevertheless, most of the time, when one visits a garden to harvest, there is little doubt about the result. In contrast, given their vast ethnobotanical knowledge of wild plants that are well-adapted to the environment, their locations, and their lack of mobility, anxiety seems not to be an issue for gathering.

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What Gamekeepers Do Gamekeepers and congeners such as animal masters, guardian animals, or masters of animals (Dye, this volume) and their interactions with hunters are the main subjects of this collection. Many of these beliefs focus on a hunter’s ability to successfully take the game, the automatic reincarnation of the game taken by hunters through the agency of game masters, and how shamans communicate with gamekeepers to maintain their goodwill and continually make game available. In a review of Near Eastern iconography, Stein (in this volume) argues that gamekeepers guide hunters to game or withhold game if proper rituals are not employed. Proper killing and associated rituals are also present in North America (Dye, this volume) as well. Replenishment or rejuvenation of the game is a common task of gamekeepers, as shown in the chapters by Chacon, Tepher, Stein, Garfinkel, and especially Dye. Dye describes the reincarnation beliefs that were widespread in North American hunting cultures and their close connection with shamanism noted in other chapters (Tiley, Hitchcock; Fernández-Llamazares and Virtanen 2020; Mykhailova and Garfinkel, all this volume). Dye, however, notes that overharvesting led to the near extinction of white-tailed deer and beaver in the Northeast during the fur trade, even though native peoples continued to believe in their immediate reincarnation, as do contemporary dugong hunters described by Tiley (in this volume). Like Dye, Tiley associates extreme dugong (Dugong dugong) depletion as a direct consequence of external demand brought on by globalization and trade. Århem’s contribution presents a unique geographical perspective, absent from others in this volume, by extensively documenting the existence of “spirit areas or forests” among the Katuic-speaking people of Laos. It is believed that certain areas are ruled by local spirits who strongly circumscribe human activities, which leads Århem to document greater biodiversity in those areas. The recognition of sacred places where extractive activities are spiritually regulated is practiced elsewhere in Southeast Asia (Sponsel 2016). Consequently, some areas may not be farmed or have restrictions on foraging activities. According to Århem, each village has several spirit forests that encompass anywhere from 15% to 30% of their territory. Many of these areas are old-growth forests with high biodiversity, apparently maintained through use restrictions. This may parallel what conservation biologists refer to as sink-source dynamics (Novaro et al. 2000), as noted by Chacon (in this volume). That is, distant areas or sources (also called refugia) can replenish hunted or sink areas. In his contribution to this volume, Århem states that these areas act as a conservation regime, a local patchwork of nature reserves. And further states that the set of beliefs and practices associated with these spirit forests constitutes an ethical code. As I detail below, having territorial control over an area, which seems to be the situation in Århem’s case studies, is an important precondition for conservation.

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Theoretical Perspectives How gamekeepers may relate to ecological and economic theories of hunting is complex. With respect to the impact of native hunting on game populations, I suggest there are two camps, even though my division is a bit of an oversimplification. The conservation camp (Traditional Ecological Knowledge [TEK] perspective noted by Chacon, in this volume) believes that native practices and beliefs lead to the conservation of game species, and this view is most forcefully argued by FernandezLlamazares et al. and Århem (in this volume). Contrastingly, the opportunistic camp championed by Chacon, Tiley, and Dye (in this volume) argues that hunters are interested in maximizing their rates of return while foraging without concern for the future. I have written on this topic (Hames 1987, 2007) and concluded that conservation in small-scale egalitarian societies rarely occurs. However, it certainly exists in some chiefdom-level societies, as I describe below. In the following section, I review the broader conservationist and opportunist literature. Conservationists Conservationists generally claim that native peoples live in harmony with the environment, and any deviation from harmony is usually a consequence of outside influences by colonial powers or commercial interests. The connection between gamekeepers and conservation in the recent past could be said to have begun with historian Calvin Martin in his widely cited “Keepers of the Game” (1978), wherein he claimed that prior to European colonization and invasion, native North Americans lived in harmony with game populations. This generalization resonated widely among conservation groups such as the Sierra Club. It also resonated with early cultural ecologists such as Rappaport (1983), who argued that human cultural ecological systems were self-regulating through ritual practices so that they did not overshoot the carrying capacity of the environment. Martin argued that many aboriginal North American groups believed that gamekeepers would maintain the supply of animals if rules of etiquette, restraint, and ritual were followed. Conversely, if such requirements were not followed, then gamekeepers could cause disease, starvation, and other forms of retribution on hunters, their families, and even their villages. The ethnographic contributions to this volume describe in great detail these practices and the negative and positive consequences should the rules be broken or followed. Martin then argued that native peoples blamed diseases and starvation initiated by expanding European invaders on their supernatural gamekeepers who had broken their agreement with native people to keep them supplied with the game and to prevent catastrophic events such as epidemics and starvation so long as appropriate rituals were practiced. In turn, this led native hunters to wage a vengeful “war on animals,” which ultimately led to overhunting and the local extinction of game in the context of the fur trade. In response to Martin’s widely heralded monograph, Krech (1981) organized an edited volume critiquing Martin’s work and followed it with a (1999) monograph broadly examining the evidence that Native North Americans lived in harmony with the environment. In conservation biology, Kent Redford (1991) extended the critique using the ironic phrase “The Ecologically Noble Savage.”

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In Amazonia, belief in supernatural gamekeepers and their role in conservation through reincarnation and proper rituals and taboos was widely theorized by earlier researchers such as Reichel-Dolmatoff (1976), McDonald (1977), and Ross (1978). In this volume, Fernández-Llamazares et al. and Chacon review some of the comparative Amazonian research on this topic. Historically, the work of ReichelDolmatoff (1976) on the Tukano has been particularly influential. The Tukano have a large number of complex requirements based on sexual behavior, reproductive condition, and diet that must be followed by hunters to enjoy the blessings of the “Master of Animals.” Breaking his rules leads to a variety of dire consequences. Even though his culturological emphasis is on spiritual harmony, Reichel-Dolmatoff veers towards the mundane ecological when he states, “The three aspects I have mentioned—population growth, the exploitation of the physical environment, and the control of aggression—can be reduced to one single problem, that is, the maintenance of a balanced ecosystem” (1976:314). With respect to this concept of balance or conservation, contributions by Fernández-Llamazares et al. and Århem (in this volume) use the synonymous term management without a clear definition other than that certain species or land areas are taboo or hunters follow a variety of appropriate rituals when taking the game to maintain positive social relations with game masters. It seems to me that tabooed areas in Århem’s study of the Katuic-speaking people of Laos may serve to maintain local biodiversity and may be designed to do so as a form of management. I find it significant that villages corporately own protected areas (even though Århem notes the government does not recognize such ownership), which, as I have noted, is a requirement for conservation (Hames, 1987; and below). I hope Århem continues his research with an emphasis on measures of biological diversity and human use. Fernández-Llamazares et al. also mention the existence of “spirit sites,” which require circumspect behavior by Tsimane who enter these areas, but their extent and role in management are not elucidated. More to the point, Fernández-Llamazares et al. claim that the Tsimane engages in sustainable management by following procedures enforced by gamekeepers through their shamans. At the same time, they note that young Tsimane no longer follows traditional game taboos because of consumption needs in the face of game scarcity, even though their elders explain scarcity in terms of breaking the traditional relationship between hunters and game masters by not following associated rituals. Thus, current scarcity is a consequence of ignoring the commandments set down by game masters. In making their case, Fernandez-Llamazares et al., cite Vickers’ 10-year study of the Siona-Secoya as an example of sustainability. Vickers’ research (1988, 1995) is very important because, at 10 years, it is the only long-term study documenting levels of yearly game depletion. However, Vickers reports the depletion of three species in core hunting areas, and he points out that the sustainable harvesting of other species stems from the fact that “. . .most men are hunting less because of their greater involvement in cash-earning activities...” (Vickers 1995:330). He also notes, “The data also suggest that they have hunted with a strategy of maximizing shortterm yields in order to provision their households with meat, an important component of their daily diet. The available evidence suggests that the Siona and Secoya do

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not purposefully limit their kills to insure the long-term sustainability of game animals” (Vickers 1995:309, emphasis added). As noted above, proponents of conservation and related concepts have not defined and operationalized the closely related concepts of conservation, stewardship, and management to determine whether they are realized by the practices of native peoples. A widely used definition of conservation in human ecology comes from Smith and Wishnie (2000:501), who state that a conservation practice or action “. . .should (a) prevent or mitigate resource depletion, species extirpation, or habitat degradation, and (b) be designed to do so.” Following Hunn (1982), the design criterion is crucial. If a group exploits game resources without causing depletion, it is not necessarily evidence of conservation, rather, it could be the result of low harvest rates as a consequence of low demand or inefficient technology. When low levels of depletion occur without design, Hunn named this a side effect or epiphenomenal conservation. In requiring design, one needs to demonstrate that one reduces shortterm harvesting for the long-term goal of keeping the resource around for future benefit. For example, design elements found in modern conservation regulations are based on counts of a particular species, with the goal of setting quotas on a yearly or seasonal basis. Such regulations may include not killing females or young, setting bag limits and size limits, and prohibiting hunting in certain areas. These regulations are designed to limit short-term, indiscriminate extraction, leading to the long-term persistence of game populations. Sustainability and management are used most explicitly in the applied literature. Sustainability is derived from the concept of maximum sustainable yield (MSY) in wildlife biology and is defined as the “. . .highest average catch that can be continuously taken from an exploited population. . .under average environmental conditions” (Tsikliras and Froese 2019:109). Included in this definition are regulations or practices, as noted above, designed to achieve such an end. Management is a yet broader term to characterize anything from regulations on the taking of species to broad-scale environmental modification through burning and other means to enhance the environment in terms of human economic goals. It is defined as “. . .all those policies and practices that effectively sustain ecosystem composition, structure, productivity, and integrity” (Burton 2005:306). The concept of management may be problematic as it relates to conservation or sustainability. For example, researchers have long noted that native peoples burn large tracts of land in order to create an ecosystem beneficial to humans and use the term management to characterize this activity (Lewis 1982). But burning may prevent or interrupt natural ecological successions to maintain grasslands by preventing forest succession, which has both positive and negative implications for a variety of game species as well as broader implications for biodiversity. In this case, management through burning is done for the benefit of humans and may harm or destroy other living components of the ecosystem. This burning by huntergatherers is called “cultural burning” or fire-stick farming, and it is found worldwide (Lewis 1982; Long et al. 2021), and evidence for it may date from as early as 50,000 years ago (Hunt et al. 2007). An excellent recent study is Bird et al.’s (2005) detailed research on Martu hunter-gatherers in Australia. Despite their meticulous

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research on burned areas, they note that it is unclear whether the benefits are long or short term as far as Martu subsistence is concerned (Bird et al. 2005:457). There are reports of wild plant management and agroforestry in the Amazon contained in the edited volume by Posey and Balee (1989). Following swidden abandonment, there is the creation of an anthropogenic forest dominated by valuable plants such as Brazil nut trees or moriche palms. The degree to which this is by design needs further investigation, as evidenced in the debate around the Kayapó apȇtȇ or managed forest (Parker 1992; Posey 1992). I must emphasize that the factors of low population density leading to low local demand and a lack of external markets show that native Amazonians rarely deplete game populations. A wide-scale study by de Paula et al. (2022:1) on 30 Amazonian communities studied over 63 months shows that “These findings reflect the exceptionally low human population density and continuous forest cover of the study landscape, and long-term hunting sustainability and local protein acquisition will depend on maintaining these social and environmental settings.” This represents yet another example of sustainability as a side effect of low demand created by low human population density. A similar point is made by Shepard (2002) for the Matsigenka of Peru. It is also important to note that lands inhabited by small-scale native peoples have the greatest biodiversity anywhere on the planet (Fletcher et al. 2021; Schuster et al. 2019). However, I will argue below that there is little empirical evidence that native practices are designed to maintain or enhance biodiversity but are rather a side effect of inefficient technology and low demand. Opportunists Those in the opportunist camp generally stress that hunters will attempt to maximize their net rate of return while hunting, which is a fundamental prediction of optimal foraging theory (Pyke et al. 1977), whether one is a time minimizer or an energy maximizer. In this perspective, individuals attempt to achieve their goals as efficiently as possible without regard to the future. Rates of return are optimized for time minimizers because hunting as efficiently as possible allows hunters to engage in other crucial fitness behaviors such as childcare, rest, and maintenance of social ties. Optimal foraging allows energy maximizers to gain as much food as possible, especially in impoverished environments or when food must be preserved for future use when resources, for example, become seasonally unavailable. Optimization models occupy a wide literature, from evolutionary biology and paleontology to conservation biology and anthropology. One important but indirect application of opportunism in paleontology comes from Martin (1966), who argues that the disappearance of megafauna (mammals greater than about 46 kg) in the New World was a consequence of opportunistic human hunting. He holds that as hunter-gatherers moved into the New World, prey animals encountered new super predators (i.e., humans) with whom they had no previous experience, making them easy targets. Megafauna were especially targeted because of their high rates of return, as loosely predicted by the diet breadth model (Pyke et al. 1977). Given these two facts, Martin claimed that human hunting caused their extinction. In the New World, at least, the overkill hypothesis may be problematic for several reasons. The empirical issue revolves around the timing of

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humans’ entrance into the New World and the subsequent extinction of megafauna. Meltzer (2021) shows that of the 38 genera of megafauna living during the Pleistocene, 20 had become extinct before the arrival of humans. This suggests a long-term trend of megafauna decline as perhaps a consequence of environmental change (see also Grayson and Meltzer 2003). While there are some 16 megafaunal kill or scavenging sites attributed to humans, there are hundreds of modern bison kill sites where hundreds to thousands of animals were killed, yet bison at the time of contact were plentiful. The paucity of extinct megafauna kill sites suggests that the megafauna at those kill sites were already on their way to extinction. However, Grayson and Meltzer (2003) admit that the relatively recent extinction of some New World island fauna (e.g., Hansford et al. 2018) was likely a consequence of humans. Martin’s overkill model has been extended to cover the disappearance of megafauna worldwide during the late Pleistocene (Dembitzer et al. 2022; Sandom et al. 2014). The issue is far from resolved. Nagaoka et al. (2018) note that there has been little interaction between archaeologists, ecologists, and paleontologists to resolve this issue. Their survey of researchers shows that paleontologists and ecologists strongly support the overkill hypothesis, while archaeologists largely believe megafaunal extinction may be a combination of overkill and environmental change. In our contemporary scene, one needs quantitative data on game offtakes over time to demonstrate whether following the rules and practices required by supernatural game masters leads to conservation. Unfortunately, those who claim conservation practices are mediated by supernatural gamekeepers do not present quantitative data on game harvesting. In contrast, those who characterize native peoples as opportunists have extensively measured game harvesting and tested conservation hypotheses among native Amazonians (Alvard 1993, 1994; Chacon 2012, this volume; Hames 1991; Smith 2001; Stearman 1994; Vickers 1988). In all cases, they have shown that native Amazonians are opportunists and not conservationists. Nevertheless, a significant problem in most of these studies is that they have sampled for only 1–2 years. To convincingly demonstrate conservation or opportunism, we need greater time depth. Vickers’ (1988) research (noted above) is the best we have, and as mentioned above, he finds opportunism and not conservation.

Conditions for Conservation There is clear evidence that native peoples can engage in conservation. In 1987, I (Hames) identified the set of conditions that would have to exist for conservation. They are as follows: territoriality to prevent outsiders from spoiling the conservation efforts of locals; internal checks to prevent cheaters within the territorial unit from spoiling the restraint of those who conserve; and a lack of external markets for production beyond limited local consumption. Later, Rogers (1991) added another condition revolving around the long-term reproductive consequences of prodigious versus conservative resource use.

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When I began writing on conservation, I wish I had read the excellent survey by Johannes (1978) on Pacific island fishing conservation. In it, he provides compelling evidence of traditional conservation practices that meet my above-stated requirements for the evolution of conservation. Many of these societies have powerful chiefs who have territorial control over reefs, lagoons, and sometimes distant offshore fishing locations. Control may also extend to terrestrial resources such as tortoise and bird nesting sites. Such powerful leaders are absent in small-scale Amazonian societies. Externally, Pacific island chiefs can prevent individuals outside of their territorial domain from fishing, thus reserving it for their own people. Internally, chiefs may also fine or otherwise punish locals for breaking fishing regulations. For example, within a chief’s domain, he can establish catch limits, prevent off-season fishing, and specify which family groups can fish. Individuals who break such rules are fined and/or shamed (see Johannes 1978:353, Table 1, for a long list of conservation measures). In addition, chiefs would take punitive measures against outsiders who fished in their territories (Johannes 1978). Johannes (1978) describes how these sustainable systems began to break down when colonial officials and western-educated local leaders encouraged commercial export fishing to satisfy external demand in order to raise money for development (see Dye and Tiley, in this volume). In the process, local fishermen were able to bypass the power of traditional chiefs, whose aim was to ensure local demand was met. He specifically noted sharing practices that aligned chiefly regulations with the moral economy (Johannes 1978:356). Prior to Western contact it was customary in most of Oceania to share one's catch with one's fellow villagers and to receive products of their labor in return. It is difficult to convey the fundamental importance of this custom to Westerners whose most basic assumptions about the distribution of goods and services are firmly rooted in a money economy.

As chiefly control diminished through colonial takeover and later native governments bent on modernization to export fish for profit, widespread depletion of fishing stocks rapidly occurred. In this volume, Tiley’s contribution demonstrates the role of external markets in leading to the depletion of dugong numbers in the Torres Straits. The drastic plunge in dugong numbers was also abetted by the introduction of nets. Mirroring the findings of Johannes (1978), Tiley also notes how the loss of dugong sharing rent social relations between families and diminished the culturally valued roles of shamans who could maintain stocks and the status of superior dugong hunters. Notably, Nobel laureate economist Elinor Ostrom (1990) used the Polynesian data as an example of how commons are managed for sustainability and conservation.

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Dietary Game Taboos It is rather surprising to me that game taboos per se are not addressed or linked in this collection, as early arguments about conservation and sustainability in Amazonia focused on this topic. I would note, however, that Arnold (in this volume), for Andean peoples, documents “alimentary exogamy,” which is similar to a fairly common Amazonian taboo prohibiting hunters from eating their own kills. By game taboos, I mean the prohibition on consuming and sometimes killing particular animals. Following Ross (1978) in his comprehensive examination of Amazonian game taboos, when applied to the entire population, they are called “general taboos,” and when applied to a specific age, sex, ritual, reproductive status, etc., they are called specific taboos. In an earlier comparative study of 11 Amazonian societies, McDonald (1977) argued that game taboos in Amazonia serve as a “Primitive Environmental Protection Agency.” Like Ross, he details taboos on the consumption of game animals (but not always killing) that are restricted to a particular age, sex, reproductive status (pregnant or lactating), or parenting status (parents of very young offspring). Ross, in contrast, argues that general game taboos are designed to maximize hunting efficiency. That is, certain game animals are proscribed because pursuing them would lower a hunter’s overall rate of return. In short, Ross uses an opportunistic approach to explain game taboos, while MacDonald argues for conservation. Game taboo theories based on conservation or efficiency are problematic for a number of reasons. First, even though a hunter or family member may not be able to consume a game animal, a hunter can give it to others who are not restricted (Arnold, in this volume). McDonald (1977) seems to assume that game tabooed for a successful hunter or his family is not widely shared among co-residents. However, the sharing of games outside of one’s family, especially large games, is common in Amazonia (Hames 2000) and elsewhere (Gurven 2004). By sharing, successful hunters gain prestige and status, and through reciprocity, may expect the return of a game animal they or their families can consume. Second, if the taboo is general, this only puts increased hunting pressure on non-tabooed game animals. Third, certain species, most prominently big game such as tapir, capybara, and deer, are generally or completely taboo, according to Ross’ survey (1978): they cannot be killed or consumed by anyone. If these taboos were designed for conservation, one would predict that they would perhaps be switched on or off depending on game levels. But no such evidence is provided by Ross or MacDonald. In my own research among the Yanomamö, I found that brocket deer (Mazama americana) and capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) may be generally tabooed in some areas but freely hunted and consumed in others. At a specific level, teenagers, pregnant women, and those in certain ritual states are proscribed from eating a large number of common game animals (Lizot 1991:73, 76, 165). I have no explanation other than a purely cultural one. On the other hand, all carrion-eating birds are tabooed by the Yanomamö, which may be a consequence of them carrying infectious pathogens and therefore is adaptive.

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It seems to me that prohibition on large games from either conservation or opportunistic perspectives presents an interesting problem given the variation we see from culture to culture or within cultures. From an opportunistic perspective, it may be the case that heavily predated games exhibit what is known as behavioral depression (Charnov et al. 1976). In such cases, the game may become nocturnal, more alert to predators, or relocate to inaccessible zones (e.g., thickets or swamps), lowering their rate of return upon encounter and thus placing them outside of the optimal diet breadth. If this speculation is correct, then some general game taboos make sense in terms of the diet breadth model, but there is no good empirical evidence for this being the case. Alternatively, but along similar lines, Carneiro (commentary in Ross 1978) hypothesizes that the blanket taboo on all terrestrial game animals among many of the Upper Xingu (e.g., Kalapalo, Kuikuro, and Mehinaku) societies may be a consequence of the abundance of fish and their apparent high rate of return per unit effort compared to terrestrial game. In these societies, the game is regarded as unfit for human consumption for a variety of supernatural reasons. In these instances, game taboos may be an adaptive rule to maximize foraging success in the quest for high-quality protein, but only in fishdependent people.

Conclusion How do we explain the presence of gamekeepers and their similarities in so many societies? From a materialistic and behavioral ecological perspective, I can see no adaptive rationale for these beliefs and practices in terms of foraging efficiently or conserving or maintaining biodiversity. From my limited perspective, the only potential for a comprehensive theoretical approach is Malinowski’s (1954) ideas about uncertainty in regard to risky and uncertain economic activities, which are to some extent endorsed by Carneiro (1970). That is, ritual and associated beliefs develop when the outcome of a subsistence activity is uncertain or risky. The roles of supernatural gamekeepers are deeply rooted in the belief systems of the people surveyed, which are so richly documented in the ethnographic contributions to this volume.

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Dr. Raymond Hames is a professor of anthropology at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork among the Yanomamö and Ye’kwana of Venezuela. His areas of specialization include human ecology, food and labor exchange, natural resource utilization, parental investment, and warfare.