The Bacchic orgies of the Greeks, while not strictly assimilated to the ur-orgies, can scarcely be overlooked in this connection.
Montfaucon describes the Omophagi of the Greeks: “Les Omophagies étoient une fête des Grecs qui passoient la fureur Bacchique; ils s’entortilloient, dit Arnobe, de serpens et mangeoient des entrailles de Cabri crues, dont ils avaient la bouche toute ensanglantée; cela est exprimée par le nom Omophage. Nous avons vu quelquefois des hommes tous entortillez de serpens et particulièrement dans Mithras.”—(Montfaucon, “L’Antiquité expliquée,” tome 2, book 4, p. 22.)
The references to serpent-worship are curious, in view of the fact that such ophic rites still are celebrated among the Mokis, the next-door neighbors of the Zuñis, and once existed among the Zuñis themselves. The allusion to Mithras would seem to imply that these orgies must have been known to the Persians as well as the Greeks.
Bryant, speaking of the Greek orgies, uses this language: “Both in the orgies of Bacchus and in the rites of Ceres, as well as of other deities, one part of the mysteries consisted in a ceremony (omophagia), at which time they ate the flesh quite crude with the blood. In Crete, at the Dionisiaca, they used to tear the flesh with their teeth from the animal when alive.”—(Bryant, “Mythology,” London, 1775, vol. ii. p. 12.)
And again, on p. 13: “The Mænules and Bacchæ used to devour the raw limbs of animals which they had cut or torn asunder.... In the island of Chios it was a religious custom to tear a man limb from limb, by way of sacrifice to Dionysius. From all which we may learn one sad truth, that there is scarce anything so impious and unnatural as not, at times, to have prevailed.”—(Idem.)
Faber tells us that: “The Cretans had an annual festival ... in their frenzy they tore a living bull with their teeth, and brandished serpents in their hands.”—(Faber, “Pagan Idolatry,” London, 1816, vol ii. p. 265.)
These orgies were duplicated among many of the tribes of North America. Paul Kane describes the inauguration of Clea-clach, a Clallum chief (northwest coast of British America): “He seized a small dog and began devouring it alive.” He also bit pieces from the shoulders of the male by-standers.—(See “Artist’s Wanderings in North America,” London, 1859, p. 212; also, the same thing quoted by Herbert Spencer in “Descriptive Sociology.”)
Speaking of these ceremonies, Dr. Franz Boas says: “Members of tribes practising the Hamatsa ceremonies show remarkable scars produced by biting. At certain festivals it is the duty of the Hamatsa to bite a piece of flesh out of the arms, leg, or breast of a man.” (“Report on the North-Western Indians of Canada,” in “Proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science,” Newcastle-upon-Tyne Meeting, 1889, p. 12.) Doctor Boas demonstrates that the actions of the Hamatsa are an example of Ritualistic Cannibalism. (See idem, p. 55.) And, speaking of the secret societies observed among the Indians of the British northwest coast, he remarks that each has its own ceremonies. “The Nutlematl must be as filthy as possible.”—(Idem, p. 54.)
“Bernardin de Saint Pierre, in his ‘Études de la Nature’ gives it as his opinion that to eat dog’s-flesh is the first step towards cannibalism, and certainly, when I enumerate to myself the peoples whom I visited who actually, more or less, devoured human flesh, and find that among them dogs were invariably considered a delicacy, I cannot but believe that there is some truth in the hypothesis.” (Schweinfurth, “Heart of Africa,” London, 1872, vol. i. p. 191.) The Clallums, no doubt, in their frenzies, tore dogs to pieces as a substitute for the human victim of an earlier period in their culture.
Bancroft describes like orgies among the Chimsyans, of British North America. (See in “Native Races of the Pacific Slope,” vol. i. p. 171.) While the Nootkas medicine men are said to have an orgy in which “live dogs and dead human bodies are seized and torn by their teeth; but, at least in later times, they seem not to attack the living, and their performances are somewhat less horrible and bloody than the wild orgies of the Northern tribes.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 202.)
The Haidahs, of the same coast, indulge in an orgy in which the performer “snatches up the first dog he can find, kills him, and tearing pieces of his flesh, eats them.”—(Dall, quoting Dawson, in “Masks and Labrets,” Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C., 1886.)
In describing the six secret soldier societies or bands of the Mandans, Maximilian, of Wied, calls attention to the three leaders of one band, who were called dogs, who are “obliged, if any one throws a piece of meat into the ashes or on the ground, saying, ‘There, dog, eat,’ to fall upon it and devour it raw, like dogs or beasts of prey.”—(Maximilian, Prince of Wied, “Travels,” &c., London, 1843, pp. 356, 446.)
A further multiplication of references is unnecessary. The above would appear to be enough to establish the existence of almost identical orgies in Europe, America, and Asia—orgies in which were perpetuated the ritualistic use of foods no longer employed by the populace, and possibly commemorating a former condition of cannibalism.
It would add much to the bulk of this chapter to show that the dog has almost invariably been employed as a substitute for man in sacrifice. Other animals have performed the same vicarious office, but none to the same extent, especially among the more savage races. To the American Indians and other peoples of a corresponding stage of development, the substitution presents no logical incongruity. Their religious conceptions are so strongly tinged with zoolatry that the assignment of animals to the rôle of deities or of victims is the most natural thing in the world; but their belief is not limited to the idea that the animal is sacred; it comprehends, additionally, a settled appreciation of the fact that lycanthropy is possible, and that the medicine-men possess the power of transforming men into animals or animals into men. Such a belief was expressed to the writer in the most forcible way, in the village of Zuñi, in 1881. The Indians were engaged in some one of their countless dances and ceremonies (and possibly not very far from the time of the urine dance), when the dancers seized a small dog and tore it limb from limb, venting upon it every torture that savage spite and malignity could devise. The explanation given was that the hapless cur was a “Navajo,” a tribe to which the Zuñis have been spasmodically hostile for generations, and from whose ranks the fortunes of war must have enabled them to drag an occasional captive to be put to the torture and sacrificed.
Mrs. Eastman describes the “Dog Dance” of the Sioux, in which the dogs represented Chippewas, and had their hearts eaten raw by the Sioux.