16.

Ventriloquist and Trickster Performances for Healing and Divination

VLADIMIR ILICH JOCHELSON

 

(1908)

 

 

In the late nineteenth century, Russian ethnographer and linguist Vladimir Ilich Jochelson was exiled to eastern Siberia because of his revolutionary activities. He used the opportunity to study the area’s indigenous inhabitants. In 1900 he participated in the Jesup North Pacific Expedition organized by the American Museum of Natural History, for which he produced a study called The Koryak. Jochelson differs from eighteenth-century observers: He explains the shaman’s trick but does not debunk him. Jochelson also notices that shamans use fly-agaric mushrooms.

 

 

During the entire period of my sojourn among the Koryak I had opportunity to see only two shamans. Both were young men, and neither enjoyed special respect on the part of his relatives. Both were poor men who worked as laborers for the rich members of their tribe. One of them was a Maritime Koryak from Alutor. He used to come to the village of Kamenskoye in company with a Koryak trader. He was a bashful youth. His features, though somewhat wild, were flexible and pleasant, and his eyes were bright. I asked him to show me proof of his shamanistic art. Unlike other shamans, he consented without waiting to be coaxed. The people put out the oil-lamps in the underground house in which he stopped with his master. Only a few coals were glowing on the hearth, and it was almost dark in the house. On the large platform which is put up in the front part of the house as the seat and sleeping-place for visitors, and not far from where my wife and I were sitting, we could just discern the shaman in an ordinary shaggy shirt of reindeer-skin, squatting on the reindeer-skins that covered the platform. His face was covered with a large oval drum.

Suddenly he commenced to beat the drum softly and to sing in a plaintive voice: then the beating of the drum grew stronger and stronger; and his song—in which could be heard sounds imitating the howling of the wolf, the groaning of the cargoose, and the voices of other animals, his guardian spirits—appeared to come sometimes from the corner nearest to my seat, then from the opposite end, then again from the middle of the house, and then it seemed to proceed from the ceiling. He was a ventriloquist. Shamans versed in this art are believed to possess particular power. His drum also seemed to sound, now over my head, now at my feet, now behind, now in front of me. I could see nothing; but it seemed to me that the shaman was moving around us, noiselessly stepping upon the platform with his fur shoes, then retiring to some distance, then coming nearer, lightly jumping, and then squatting down on his heels.

All of a sudden the sound of the drum and the singing ceased. When the women had relighted their lamps, he was lying, completely exhausted, on a white reindeer-skin on which he had been sitting before the shamanistic performance. The concluding words of the shaman, which he pronounced in a recitative, were uttered as though spoken by the spirit whom he had summoned up, and who declared that the “disease” had left the village, and would not return.

The shaman’s prediction suited me admirably, for one of the old Koryak had forbidden his children to go into the house where I stopped to take measurements, saying that they would die if they allowed themselves to be measured. He also tried to stir up the other Koryak against me, pointing out to them that an epidemic of measles had broken out after the departure of Dr. Slunin’s expedition, and that the same thing might take place after I left.

I made an appointment with the shaman’s master to have him call on me, together with the shaman, on the following day. I wished to take a record in writing of the text of the incantations which I had heard; but when I woke up in the morning, I was informed that the shaman had left at daybreak.

I saw another shaman among the Reindeer Koryak of the Taigonos Peninsula. He had been called from a distant camp to treat a syphilitic patient who had large ulcers in his throat that made him unable to swallow. I was not present at the treatment of the patient, since the latter lived in another camp, at a distance of several miles from us, and I learned of the performance of the rite only after it was over. The Koryak asserted that the patient was relieved immediately after the shamanistic exercises, and that he drank two cups of tea without any difficulty. Among other things, the shaman ordered the isolation to the patient from his relatives, lest the spirits that had caused the disease might pass to others. A separate tent was pitched next to the main tent for the patient and his wife, who was taking care of him. I lived in the house of the patient’s brother, the official chief of the Taigonos Koryak. At my request he sent reindeer to bring the shaman. The shaman arrived. His appearance did not inspire much confidence.

In order to obtain a large remuneration, he refused at first, under various pretexts, to perform his art. I asked him to “look at my road;” that is, to divine whether I should reach the end of my journey safely. The official chief said that this performance must take place in my own tent, and not in that of some one else; but the shaman declared that his spirits would not enter a Russian lodging, and that he would be in deadly peril if he should call up spirits for a foreigner. Finally it was decided that the peril for the shaman would be eliminated by making his remuneration large enough to completely satisfy the spirits. I promised to give the shaman, not only a red flannel shirt, which he liked very much, but also a big Belgian knife. I had offered him first the choice of one of the two articles; but he declared that his spirits liked one as well as the other.

Another difficulty arose over the drum. The chief himself found a way out of it by means of casuistry. He gave his own drum, saying that a family drum must not be taken into another Koryak’s house, but that it was permissible to take it into mine. The drum was brought into my tent by one of the three wives of the chief. It was in its case, because the drum must not be taken out of the house without its cover. A violation of this taboo may result in bringing on a blizzard.

During the shamanistic exercises there were present, besides my wife and myself, the chief, his wife who had brought the drum, my cossack, and the interpreter. The shaman had a position on the floor in a corner of the tent, not far from the entrance. He was sitting with his legs crossed, and from time to time he would rise to his knees. He beat the drum violently, and sang in a loud voice, summoning the spirits. As he explained to me after the ceremony, his main guardian spirits were One-who-walks-around-the-Earth, Broad-soled-One (one of the mythical names of the wolf), and the raven. The appearance of the spirits of these animals was accompanied by imitations of sounds characteristic of their voices. Through their mediation he appealed to The-One-on-High with the following song; which was accompanied by the beating of the drum:

 

(It is) good that (he) should arrive.

Also I should well myself also reach home.

 

That is, “Let him reach home safely, and let me also reach home safely.” Suddenly, in the midst of the wildest singing and beating of the drum, he stopped, and said to me, “The spirits say that I should cut myself with a knife. You will not be afraid?” “You may cut yourself, I am not afraid,” I replied. “Give me your knife, then. I am performing my incantations for you, so I have to cut myself with your knife,” said he. To tell the truth, I commenced to feel somewhat uneasy; while my wife, who was sitting on the floor by my side, and who was completely overwhelmed by the wild shrieks and the sound of the drum, entreated me not to give him the knife. . . .

I took from its sheath my sharp “Finnish” travelling-knife, that looked like a dagger, and gave it to him. The light in the tent was put out; but the dim light of the arctic spring night (it was in April), which penetrated the canvas of the tent, was sufficient to allow me to follow the movements of the shaman. He took the knife, beat the drum, and sang, telling the spirits that he was ready to carry out their wishes. After a little while he put away the drum, and, emitting a rattling sound from his throat, he thrust the knife into his breast up to the hilt. I noticed, however, that after having cut his jacket, he turned the knife downward. He drew out the knife with the same rattling in his throat, and resumed beating the drum. Then he turned to me, and said that the spirits had secured for me a safe journey over the Koryak land, and predicted that the Sun-Chief—i.e., the Czar—would reward me for my labors.

Contrary to my expectations, he returned the knife to me (I thought he would say that the knife with which he had cut himself must be left with him), and through the hole in his jacket he showed spots of blood on his body. Of course, these spots had been made before. However, this cannot be looked upon as mere deception. Things visible and imaginary are confounded to such an extent in primitive consciousness, that the shaman himself may have thought that there was, invisible to others, a real gash in his body, as had been demanded by the spirits. The common Koryak, however, are sure that the shaman actually cuts himself, and that the wound heals up immediately. . . .

Many shamans, previous to their seances, eat fly-agaric [mushroom] in order to get into ecstatic states. Once I asked a Reindeer Koryak, who was reputed to be an excellent singer, to sing into the phonograph. Several times he attempted, but without success. He evidently grew timid before the invisible recorder; but after eating two fungi, he began to sing in a loud voice, gesticulating with his hands. I had to support him, lest he fall on the machine; and when the cylinder came to an end, I had to tear him away from the horn, where he remained bending over it for a long time, keeping up his songs.