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About The Omaha morning bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 1922-1927 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 19, 1923)
Natives of India’s Wild Hills Continue Chopping Off Their Neighbors’ Heads and Even Flaying Them Alive to Appease the Evil Spirits and On the left, a remarkable photograph of a pious native kneeling in prayer at a wayside shrine, be fore the ex traordinary graven images of three of the deities he worships. Note the flowers with which he adorned the images before beginning his devotions Win Favor From the Good Ones An Indian religions fa* natic torturing himself by hanging suspended by the ankles for hours at a time la the burning heat of the tropical sun. This will, he believes, help win the forgive ness of heaven for his sins A HUMAN' sacrifice, the ghastly re ligious practice that we are accustomed to consider as hav ing completely died out long ago, is still going on in the hills of India, just north of romantic Burma, where the pretty native girl of K;pT‘Vg’s “Mandalay” lived amongst the p»p,A» and the sound ten *••'.. •- Is 1 . ften trav lei ■* A r n apj aching a v:i; Jfe in the Nags Hills, above Burma, f see rows of rkubs or dripping hea "< hanging from •he trees. They are t .d that these are ‘ne remains of victims who have been surprised and deliberately murdered In th» Jungle because it was thought the gods demanded new sacrifices. A r»-er* government investigation brings to light the fact that th«Te are at least a few persons sacrificed in this way every year, and that they are usual ly slaves brought from the neighboring •erritory of Assam for just this ghastly purpose. The Governor of the frontier of Burma reports that when the N'aga tribesmen are wealthy enough to buy more slaves the yearly sacrifice often reaches as many as ‘wenty or thirty victims. Many of these are small boys and girls kid naped from Assam. The government, he says, often steps in to save these un f rtunates when it he.ars of the ap proaching sacrifice, but it has been no ticed that in these cases the murders are merely postponed. Sometimes the victim for the pro posed propitiating of the “terhoma," or evil spirit, is earmarked and allowed to go about the village until they are ready for him. Government ofli ials hasten to buy the freedom of these marked per sons, although they realize that the re demption money is quite likely to bo spent or a r.ew set of slaves from Assam. A pathetic story is told by an English civil service officer who was staying iri the hills of the violent death meted out to a young slave boy in order to ward off the mysterious “terhoma,” or haunt ing evil spirit. The boy belonged to another tribe and was sold to an influential and prosper ous savage in one of the villages of the Nrga Hills. Unfortunately for the poor boy, this man died shortly after the purchase. To the villagers this mean* nothing else than that the dread "terhoma” was angry and must be appeased as usual with the sacrifice of a human being The fact that the lioy was purchased just hafora the death of his owner wns con sidered a bed omen, and in their simple minds they decided that it was on ar. ■ ount of the purchase that the evil spirit was enraged. Immediately upon coming to this de rision, th*y flayed the boy alive, cutting his flesh off bit by hit until he died •hen divided the body, giving « piece of flesh to each man in the village to put in*n his “dolu,” a largo corn basket, to avert evil. On another occasion one of these hill villages w» attacked by smallpox rind a number of villagers di<d. Therefore it wrb decided that one of the strange spirits who are suppose to represent that particular scourge was angry and a village coun cil was called. It was decided that the only way to avert the evil spirit was to 1 ave f :'.r ••• go .* II '! bring in a uta.i as a;. : fering to the “terhoma.” And so four of thoss who had not been strick en with the terrible dis ease crept through the jungle, to lie in wa.* by the cultivation path of a neighboring village. The murder, from the Naga point of view, was " eminent lv successful. The four crept upon a woman, a small boy and a baby belonging to the other village and suc ceeded in securing for their angry deity the baby's head and the ears of the other two, which they carried off and buried in the vicinity of the village to be pro tec teil. The natives firmly be lieved that the angry deity was appeased, for shortly after the murder of the baby the smallpox ceased to spread in the village. The people of the Naga Hills are head . hunters, looking upon the decapi tating of a human being as a praise worthy exploit at any time, and the more praiseworthy if tha victim is taken hy surprise. In one of the villages, among tho I.hotas, any human flesh brought into tho village on return from an expedition of tills gentle kind is examined by a sort of board of old men, who decide whether it is really what it is stated to he by the hunter. If it is, (here is a cere mony celebrating tho hunter’s success. Nor docs tho Naga tribesman make any very great distinction between human heads and the heads of game. Man is only the biggest and the most dangerous game. Under certain circumstances, heads taken from women and children are no re highly valued hy tho headhunter tha those taken from men, provided, in tho case of the children, that tho teeth are cut. In Kill /.(ah•iglishrnnn.rnptnb footer, of tho 17th Infantry, then quartered at Kohirna, went on a shooting trip litfo tho I.hota country. Accompanied hv some men of J’hiro, he was obliged to «top fur shelter at night In one of tie villages, hut fVfts received with rolieiiu. cause It was found that ther ■ was en mity between bis savage attendant and his host The reason for the feud between these two savage* from different villages wm jL Typical natives of the hill re gion north of Burma, where head hunting and human sacri frees persist in spite of - everything the British r- - ; \ government can do \ that in the davi of their youth they hau quarreled over a very pretty girl in tho village where Captain Porter’s attend ant lived. 1 he story was that the girl’s mother had said that she should marry which ever of her suitors would bring lier tho ears of some girl belonging to a neigh boring tribe. It turned out that Captain Porter’s attendant was the successful ear taker and suitor; the wife of the host had no <ars, and hence must have been tho vic tim I The heads of women and children are taken more often under less romantic ireumatances, however. Tim favorite method is to hide at dawn by a neigh bor’s well and to take the head of the first woman or ehild coming to draw water I he Idea of the necessity of human sacrifices to the unseen spirits is preen lent all over India, although in the Hindu religions of the more civilized parts of tho country it Is more usually in tha form of self-punishment and self torture. \ favorite mode of mortifying the flesh among (he strange fakirs nnd adhun at the bazaars along the sacred Kiver CnngeR is to sit under tho blazing Indian sun all day, with five amall flros lighted close f„ the body. Other Pastern mystics who devote Entrance to the Shive Dagon Pagoda, in Rangoon, one of India's most magnificent places of worship their lives to renouncing the world and thinking pious thoughts sit nnd sleep on beds of spikes. Sometimes these spikes are placed inside a pair of wooden shoes tn which they stand. A prominent feature in these ascetic practices Is hanging head downwards, suspended from the bough of a tree or a suitable framework, for perhaps hours at a time. Even severer forms of voluntary tor ture are also known, as when a man ties his arm to a support, such as n light bamboo, so as to keep it erect overhead. At last the disused limb, reduced to a shrunken and rigid condition, refuses to he lowered again to its natural position. When both arm* nrc so dealt with the subject become* a helpless cripple, en tirely dependent for everything upon the kindness of others. All these tortures, including burial alive for five or six weeks, are self-inflicted. They cannot be compared with the deeds of the northern hill dis tricts, wnere the superstitious kill their fellow men. Human sacrifice has always been more or less con nected with the religious ceremo nies of primitive peoples, and nu ' rnerous instances ' if it are mentioned in the Bible. Abraham, it w i 1 1 be remembered. mine near slaying his son Jacob on the mountain, and we know that. In Ur of th« Chaldees in Abraham s time the tem plo of the strange Moon God wan the scene of countless terrible sacrifices. The blood of human victim* Is believed to have mn so freely on the altars that gutters and drains had to he construct ed to carry it away. The problem of putting an end to these cruel human sacrifices is being wrestled with to-day hy the ruling authorities In the Fiji Islands, the African jungles and nlhor parts of the world, ns well as in the hill regions of India. In Africa the purpose.of human sac rifice is the same as it is in India—to strengthen alliance with the supernat ural world. A typical sacrifice in the Congo region is described hy a mis sionary: "The savages allowed themselves the luxury of two or three human sacrifices a week. This ceremotiy was the occasion of public rejoicing. "The condemned person, firmly se cured, la permitted to witness the height of joy which his death is to bring. At length they untie him, make him sit on a log slightly raised from the ground, his arms hanging beside his body, his hands fastened to the ground by means of forked sticks whose extremities are se curely fastened in the soil. "Suddenly the crowd Is silent; the vil lage sorcerer has appeared. In his wool ly hair more than two hundred feathers of different colors are arranged artis tically to form an enormous headdress; two white circular marks surround the eyes, which thereby acquire extraordi nary brightness. "The sorcerer advances with short steps, swinging his feathery mane, hold ing in his nervous hand the terrible exe cution knife that must sever the head with a single blow; and he stops and greets the wretch whom he has to exe cute. "Then, as though seized with madness, he goes through contortions that no pen could describe; he tosses himself about like one possessed, leaps, doubles up, ad vances so gently, so much like a reptile, that you cannot perceive any movement of his feet The crowds applauds. “But silence is restored the moment the fatal knife is raised. The sorcerer then begins a rhythmic chant; it is the chant of death. Thus singing and ges ticulating, he approaches his victim, who is a helpless witness of these prepara tions. With white chalk he marks a line around the victim’s neck—it is there he will strike when the time arrives. "Twice brandishing the knife, he touches the condemned man’s neck with it. The chant is ended; with a leap the sorcerer approaches the victim and again steps hack; twice more his arm strikes the air by way of trial. “Then the knife is lowered and a sin gle stroke cuts off the head, which the bent pole sends rolling far away. "With a shout the crowd leaps on the body. All is over; soon the savages will joyfully return to their homes to dis cuss with interest all the horrid details of the sight they have witnessed.”