Anito

“ But Anitoo was taking no unnecessary chances. Fearing for his own men from the very first, he had dispatched a messenger into that unknown region of the cave lying beyond the Condor Gate. There was more, indeed, than the fate of his own men at stake. He knew that the majority of the enemy were of his own race, and that with them were associated two or three men from the outside world whose presence there, under such circumstances, proved the existence of a formidable conspiracy against that subterranean realm, of which he had spoken vaguely to the explorers, and to which he belonged. ”

“ Anitoo again smiled broadly, yet with the subtle suggestion of holding in reserve an unuttered fund of wisdom that comes so naturally with the people of his race.
“That is all?”
“We look for one friend who is lost. Then, we come [213] with another who has gone. He is one canaille! You have seen him?”
“Ah!” murmured Anitoo, half to himself. “What is his name? What is he like?”
“He is one Yankee. He is called Senor Don Raoul Arthur. He look—well, he look like this——” and Miranda gave an exaggerated example of Raoul’s rolling and twitching eyes. ”

“ In doing this, it is true, they ran the chance of falling into the hands of Segurra’s men—in which case they would have been recaptured by Anitoo.
One strange feature of their disappearance was that the body of Herran had apparently vanished with them. Anitoo remembered the exact spot where the explorers had been stationed during the battle and, consequently, where Herran had fallen. But now, neither living nor dead explorers could be found. It seemed incredible that these people, two of them women, would have hampered themselves in their flight with the body of a dead man. ”

“ Stepping back from the direct rays of the great ball of fire, the manifestations of whose mysterious power had until then absorbed her attention, Una found herself in the midst of a throng of people, all of them, apparently, watching her. By their dress, simple and flowing as that worn by the followers of Anitoo, she perceived these were cave men and women, some forty or fifty in number, each one standing motionless along the wall farthest from her. ”

“ Then the Manito said: “When I walk about, the leaves die on the trees and fall to the ground; the birds desert their nests and fly away beyond the lakes; the animals bury themselves in holes in the earth or in caves in the mountain side, and the winds wail the death-chant over all the land.”
“Ah, great is the Manito,” said the maiden, “and his mighty name is feared by all living things in the land. ‘Great is the Manito,’ says all the world, and his fame has spread among the children of the Great Spirit till they crouch with fear and say: ‘Mighty and cruel is the Manito! ”

“ To retrace their steps into the depths of the outer cave would bring them between two fires and, aside from other tragic possibilities, would certainly arouse the suspicions of Anitoo and his cavemen. To seek safety in the other direction, to pass within the section of the cave guarded by the [231] Condor Gate, was to court unknown dangers in a region that loomed dark and mysterious enough. It was this latter course, however, that Miranda chose.
“This Anitoo take us to his queen,” he argued. “Perhaps she is good woman. It is better we go alone. Senor Anitoo, he come after.” ”

“ They knew that Antrid was swinging ever outward from the mother planet.
"You must do it alone," Dantor was saying; "you and Ulana. I have no control over these Llotta. I am here only on sufferance of Ianito, and Ianito is no more. But they know it not. These in the dome think he is with you now, cloaked in invisibility. The tale of the cloaks has been broadcast. You are safe for the present and can descend to the base of the rocket with impunity. Ianito's name is the password. And here is a ray pistol, fully charged ”

“ As soon as he arrived at the place where the girl was making dawak she said to him, “You are the only person who has come here. If you are an enemy cut me in only one place so I will not have so much to heal.” “I am not an enemy; I came here for I heard what you were doing; so I became a bird and flew.” Kanag gave betel-nut to her and they chewed. Their quids looked like the beads pinogalan, so they knew that they were brother and sister. The girl said to him, “Go inside of the big iron caldron so that the anitos who care for me will not eat you.” ”

“ There are two inferior gods, Cabigat and Suyan, these deities hold intercourse with mankind through the Anitos or ancestral spirits, some good, some evil, who reward or chastise mankind in this life. They represent these spirits by roughly-carved idols of wood. Some of these idols are male and others female. Occasionally the carving is of an obscene nature, and similar to some clay images I have seen taken from tombs in Peru. ”

“ Like the Igorrotes, their religion consists in ancestor-worship, but they call their idols Dinatas instead of Anitos. They are much impressed by thunder, which they call the voice of the lightning, and a rainbow fills them with awe. Like the Tagals, and some races in British India, they consider the crocodile a sacred animal, and [335] respectfully address it as grandfather. They also, like the old heathen Tagals, consider rocks, caves, or balete trees, as residences of spirits. They celebrate a feast in honour of the Dinatas after the harvest, and make sacrifices of swine. ”

“ The people are in great straits. My father, hear me, and hasten to look upon the Ainu and help them.’ If you do this, your father will help us.”
Again, the Aino keep eagles in cages, worship them as divinities, and ask them to defend the people from evil. Yet they offer the bird in sacrifice, and when they are about to do so they pray to him, saying: “O precious divinity, O thou divine bird, pray listen to my words. Thou dost not belong to this world, for thy home is with the Creator and his golden eagles. This being so, I present thee with these inao and cakes and other precious things. ”

“ The Aino who will kill you is the best shot among us. There he is, he weeps and asks your forgiveness; you will feel almost nothing, it will be done so quickly. We cannot feed you always, as you will understand. We have done enough for you; it is now your turn to sacrifice yourself for us. You will ask God to send us, for the winter, plenty of otters and sables, and for the summer, seals and fish in abundance. ”

“ Wooded, rocky knolls, with Aino huts, the vermilion peaks of the volcano of Usu-taki redder than ever in the sinking sun, a few Ainos mending their nets, a few more spreading edible seaweed out to dry, a single canoe breaking the golden mirror of the cove by its noiseless motion, a few Aino loungers, with their "mild-eyed, melancholy" faces and quiet ways suiting the quiet evening scene, the unearthly sweetness of a temple bell—this was all, and yet it was the loveliest picture I have seen in Japan. ”

“ There must be a large number of Aino fairy-tales besides those here given, as the chief tellers of stories, in Aino-land as in Europe, are the women, and I had mine from men only, the Aino women being much too shy of male foreigners for it to be possible to have much conversation with them. Even of the tales I myself heard, several were lost through the destraction of certain papers,—among others at least three of the Panaumbe and Penaumbe Cycle, which I do not trust myself to reconstruct from memory at this distance of time. ”

“ If the Japanese have no one to talk to they croon hideous discords to themselves, and it was a relief to leave Ito behind and get away with an Aino, who was at once silent, trustworthy, and faithful. Two bright rivers bubbling over beds of red pebbles run down to Shiraoi out of the back country, and my directions, which were translated to the Aino, were to follow up one of these and go into the mountains in the direction of one I pointed out till I said "Shiraoi." ”

“ Bears, are, however, becoming rare in Yesso, and the Japanese Government, which is paternal even in regard to the fauna of the islands, has from time to time interfered with many venerable Aino customs.
The religion of this interesting race is almost as mysterious as everything else appertaining to it. The Ainos have no idols and no temples, and their religious rites are of a decidedly simple nature. They, however, seem to believe in an infinity of spirits inhabiting various and varied things, and their pantheon is seemingly a crowded one. ”

“ Thus the Aino hopes to profit in various ways by slaughtering the creatures, which, nevertheless, he treats as divine. He expects them to carry messages for him to their kindred or to the gods in the upper world; he hopes to partake of their virtues by imbibing parts of their bodies or in other ways; and apparently he looks forward to their bodily resurrection in this world, which will enable him again to catch and kill them, and again to reap all the benefits which he has already derived from their slaughter. ”

“ Inasmuch as the little civilisation now possessed by the Ainos has in great measure been learnt from the Japanese, it is natural that their modern language should have picked up numbers of Japanese words, from the name of kamui which they give to their gods, down to the rice-beer or sake in which they seek continual drunkenness, now their main source of enjoyment. One purpose which their language serves is to prove how widely they once spread over the country now Japan, where place-names alone remain to indicate a former Aino population. ”

“ Nothing will induce an Aino to go near a grave. Even if a valuable bird or animal falls near one, he will not go to pick it up. A vague dread is for ever associated with the departed, and no dream of Paradise ever lights for the Aino the "Stygian shades." ”

“ Even in religion, the most conservative of all institutions, especially among barbarians, the Ainos have suffered Japanese influence to intrude itself. It is Japanese rice-beer, under its Japanese name of sake, which they offer in libations to their gods. Their very word for "prayer" seems to be archaic Japanese. A mediæval Japanese hero, Yoshitsune, is generally allowed to be held in religious reverence by them. The idea of earthquakes being caused by the wriggling of a gigantic fish under the earth is shared by the Ainos with the Japanese and with several other races. ”

“ The house-master was a friendly man, and much attached to the Ainos. If other officials entrusted with Aino concerns treat the Ainos as fraternally as those of Usu and Lebunge, there is not much to lament. This man also gave them a high character for honesty and harmlessness, and asked if they might come and see me before I left; so twenty men, mostly carrying very pretty children, came into the yard with the horses. They had never seen a foreigner, but, either from apathy or politeness, they neither stare nor press upon one as the Japanese do, and always make a courteous recognition. ”

“ So far as blood, however, is concerned, the Japanese have in the long run been little, if at all, affected by Aino influence. The simple reason is that the half-breeds, though numerous, die out in the second or third generation. The Ainos are the hairiest race in the world, their luxuriantly thick black beards and hirsute limbs giving them an appearance which contrasts strangely with the smoothness of their Japanese lords and masters. ”

“ Batchelor, who tells us that the Aino “are firmly convinced that the spirits of birds and animals killed in hunting or offered in sacrifice come and live again upon the earth clothed with a body; and they believe, further, that they appear here for the special benefit of men, particularly Ainu hunters.”590 The Aino, Mr. ”

“ We described the physical type, the tattooing, the dress and the salutations, after which Sangyea and Kutoroge gave a yukara and we made some remarks about the problem of Ainu origin and relationship.
Had we seen the program, we should not have permitted the word Aino to appear upon it; nor should we have allowed announcement of a “bear-dance” of which we never heard. It is true that there is dancing at bear-feasts but that is different from having a dance that is called a bear-dance. As to the name of our people it is not Aino, but Ainu, which is a word in their own language meaning man. ”

“ A very ugly Aino woman, hardly human in her ugliness, was splitting bark fibre. There were several irori, Japanese fashion, and at one of them a grand-looking old man was seated apathetically contemplating the boiling of a pot. Old, and sitting among ruins, he represented the fate of a race which, living, has no history, and perishing leaves no monument. ”

“ It was a beautiful but very steep walk, or rather climb, to the top of an abrupt acclivity beyond the village, on which the temple or shrine stands. It would be impossible to get up were it not for the remains of a wooden staircase, not of Aino construction. Forest and mountain surround Biratori, and the only breaks in the dense greenery are glints of the shining waters of the Sarufutogawa, and the tawny roofs of the Aino lodges. It is a lonely and a silent land, fitter for the HIDING place than the DWELLING place of men. ”

“ The innocent savage is not found in Aino-land, if indeed he is to be found anywhere. The Aino's imagination is as prurient as that of any Zola, and far more outspoken. Pray, therefore, put the blame on him, if much of the language of the present collection is such as it is not usual to see in print. Aino stories and Aino conversation are the intellectual counterpart of the dirt, the lice, and the skin-diseases which cover Aino bodies. ”

“ But the boat in which the Aino was went on its voyage, and at last reached his native place, whereupon the sailors threw the Aino into the water. He thought he had been dreaming. Afterwards he came to himself. The boat and its sailors had disappeared—whither he could not tell. But he went to his house, and, falling asleep, dreamt a dream. He dreamt that the same old chief appeared to him and said: "I am no human being. I am the chief of the salmon, the divine fish. ”