Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 74.djvu/297

Rh the region of the Congo. They found some of these peoples paying homage to such objects as a piece of wood, a feather, the fin of a fish, the claw of a bird, the hoof of a goat. Others among them regarded with reverential awe a big rock, a grove of trees, some such animal as a snail, a snake, a lizard or a crocodile. In fact, anything became an object of worship to them when they fancied that a powerful unseen being had attached himself to it.

The fact that no man ever worships a material object is well illustrated by the treatment accorded a fetish. If a fetish brings good luck, it may be sold for a high price if the owner wishes to part with it. If it brings bad luck, it is thrown away or demolished. For all virtue has gone out of it. The spirit that was in it has departed, and it has lost its power. The favorite fetish of a Papuan of New Guinea is a little wooden doll with a bright-colored rag tied around it. If a stroke of ill fortune comes to him when he has this in his belt, he will take it out and stamp on it, or tear it in pieces with his teeth, and cast it from him as utterly of no value.

As we go about over the surface of the earth, we find that different tribes have selected different objects for their fetishes, according as the objects have impressed themselves upon them as possessing superhuman powers. Among the Maoris of New Zealand spiders were paid divine honors; for it was in their gossamer threads that they fancied the souls of the departed ascended heavenwards.

Some of the Indian tribes of the northwest regarded the raven, or the thunder-bird, as they called it, as especially sacred; and according to Capt. Cook, the Sandwich Islanders also did so. The peacock, the swan, the rooster, the eagle and the dove, have been the favorite fetishes of other tribes. In Australia and Polynesia the lizard was greatly revered. The Chaldeans paid the fish divine honors. In Egypt the ox was especially sacred, and so it is in parts of India. In certain of the Fiji Islands the shark is worshipped, just as the alligator is in the Philippines. The Samoyeds in Siberia make a fetish of the whale and the polar bear.

But the most widely worshipped of all animals is the serpent. Mr. Ferguson, in his work on "Tree and Serpent Worship," finds that the serpent was accorded divine honors by nearly all the nations of antiquity, and is now worshipped in many parts of Asia, Africa and America. Among the Lithuanians in southern Russia, says a high authority "every family entertained a real serpent as a household god." Sir John Lubbock tells us that in Liberia

No negro would intentionally injure a serpent, and any one doing so by accident would assuredly be put to death. Some English sailors once having killed one which they found in their house, were furiously attacked by the natives who killed them all and burned the house.