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give
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The UniversiTy of norTh Carolina Press ChaPel hill

 Disclaimer: This eBook does not include ancillary media that was packaged with the
printed version of the book.

This book was published with the © 2009 William Ferris Library of Congress
All rights reserved Cataloging-in-Publication Data
assistance of the H. Eugene and Lillian
Manufactured in Canada Give my poor heart ease : voices of
Youngs Lehman Fund of the University the Mississippi blues / [interviews by]
of North Carolina Press. A complete list Photographs by William Ferris William Ferris.
p. cm.
of books published in the Lehman Series
Designed by Richard Hendel “This book was published with the
appears after the index. The production Set in Hawksmoor and Miller types assistance of the H. Eugene and Lillian
by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Youngs Lehman Fund of the University
of the cd and dvd that accompany
of North Carolina Press.”
this book was supported by grants from The paper in this book meets the Includes bibliographical references and
the Center for the Study of the American guidelines for permanence and index.
durability of the Committee on ISBN 978-0-8078-3325-4 (cloth : alk.
South and the University of North
Production Guidelines for Book paper)
Carolina at Chapel Hill’s University Longevity of the Council on Library 1. Blues musicians—Mississippi—

Research Council. Resources. Interviews. 2. Blues (Music)—

Mississippi—History and criticism.
The University of North Carolina Press 3. African Americans—Mississippi—
has been a member of the Green Press Music—History and criticism. I. Ferris,
Initiative since 2003. William R.
ML3521.G58 2009
781.64309762—dc22 2009016647

13 12 11 10 09 5 4 3 2 1
For Grey Ferris, 1946–2008

My beloved brother,
You taught me photography,
And so many other things.

Wherever rain falls on parched soil,

Wherever schoolchildren are excited and learn,
Wherever the poor find justice,
You will be there with your blessing.

Go in peace and know that

Your love, your vision, your kindness,
Will never be forgotten.
They will enrich all who follow.
I walked Highway 61 till I give down in my knees.

I walked Highway 61 till I give down in my knees.

You know, I ain’t found nobody to give my poor heart ease.

—James “Son Ford” Thomas, Leland, Mississippi

contents

Acknowledgments xi Parchman Penitentiary 77

Introduction 1 Johnny Lee “Have Mercy” Thomas 79
Camp B Work Chant 84
Blues Roots 11 James “Blood” Shelby 85
Rose Hill 13 Ben Gooch 86
Mary Gordon 15 Sergeant Webb 87
Reverend Isaac Thomas 24 Roosevelt Stewart Jr. 88
Lake Mary 29 Tutwiler 89
Martha Dunbar 31 Tom Dumas 91
Scott Dunbar 33 Lee Kizart 93
Lorman 47 A Delta Road in Coahoma County 98
Louis Dotson 49 C. L. Redwine 99
Centreville 57 Corine Gardner 101
Fannie Bell Chapman 59
Gravel Springs 67
Otha Turner 69
Blues Towns and Cities 103 Looking Back 175
Leland 105 Willie Dixon 177
James “Son Ford” Thomas 111 B. B. King 185
Gussie Tobe 120
Shelby “Poppa Jazz” Brown 137 Sacred and Secular Worlds 203
Clarksdale 143 Rose Hill Church 205
Jasper Love 145 Rose Hill Church Service 211
Wade Walton 157 Clarksdale 222
WOKJ, Jackson 160 House Party 226
Joe “Poppa Rock” Louis—
The Big Daddy Show 162 Epilogue 255
Bruce Payne—News 163 Selected Bibliography, Discography,
Reverend Marcus Butler— Filmography, and Websites 259
Gospel Music 164 Index 291
Gary’s Meat House Ad 165 cd and dvd Notes 301
Bruce Payne 167
Beale Street 170
Robert Shaw 171
This page intentionally left blank
acknowledgments

This work has been a long time coming, and I helped me see the spoken word as a distinctive lit-
am indebted to many for their support along the erary form. Their integration of music with litera-
way. First and foremost are the friends whom ture in works like The Color Purple and “Power-
I recorded, photographed, and filmed. Their house” is especially exciting to me.
stories are the heart of the book that follows, and Wendy Weil, my literary agent, has patiently
for their kindness and generous hospitality I am waited for this book. Her support and belief in
forever grateful. my work for many years has been unswerving.
B. B. King, my dear friend, understood the Wendy’s husband, Michael Trossman, deeply
importance of building an academic home for loves blues, paints portraits of its performers,
the blues and blessed my work in so many ways and always greets me with, “I got the blues. You
over the years. From our first visits at Yale in the got ’em too!”
seventies, to the donation of his blues collection Elaine Maisner, my editor at the University
to help create the Blues Archive at the University of North Carolina Press, encouraged and sup-
of Mississippi in the eighties, to his visit to the ported me throughout the writing of this book.
National Endowment for the Humanities during She nurtured its creation and suggested impor-
my tenure as chairman in the nineties, B has been tant changes as I wrestled with the work.
incredibly supportive of my work. His life and his Bruce Jackson and Tom Rankin, folklore col-
music are an inspiration for all that I do. I am leagues and dear friends, read my manuscript and
indebted to B’s former manager Sid Seidenberg, offered invaluable suggestions for its revision. I
his current manager Floyd Lieberman, and his have admired their work for many years and am
dedicated assistant Tina France for their support indebted to them for their support.
over the years. The Guggenheim Foundation, the Univer-
In their distinctive ways, Patti Black, Charlotte sity of North Carolina Institute for the Arts and
Capers, Alice Walker, and Eudora Welty inspired Humanities, and UNC’s Research Council pro-
my work with folklore and the spoken word. As vided generous support that allowed me to spend
directors of the Old Capitol Museum of Missis- a year writing this book. Colleagues at IAH offered
sippi History and the Mississippi Department of helpful suggestions as the work evolved.
Archives and History, respectively, Patti and Char- My early fieldwork in the sixties and seventies
lotte organized exhibits and concerts that featured was supported by friends at the Ford Foundation
Fannie Bell Chapman, James “Son Ford” Thomas, (Sheila Biddle), Mississippi Arts Commission
and Otha Turner as performers and Bruce Payne (Lida Rogers), Mississippi Humanities Council
as host. And through their friendship and their (Cora Norman), National Endowment for the
craft as writers, Alice Walker and Eudora Welty Arts (Bess Lomax Hawes and Alan Jabbour),
xii Acknowledgments

National Endowment for the Humanities (Joe Dick’s important support of blues artists and his
Duffey), Rockefeller Foundation (Joel Colton and powerful photographs of their worlds make him
Peter Wood), Wenner-Gren Foundation (Lita Os- a national treasure.
mundson), and Yale University (Joseph Warner). At Yale University, I was honored to work
I was blessed to receive generous support from with Philip Garvan and Howard Weaver at the
each of these friends and their institutions in the Media Design Center on the production of four
sixties and seventies. films—Give My Poor Heart Ease, I Ain’t Lyin’,
A key part of my fieldwork was done when I Made in Mississippi, and Two Black Churches—
was a graduate student in folklore at the Univer- included on the dvd that accompanies this book.
sity of Pennsylvania from 1967 to 1969. My fac- Dale Lindquist, Trudier Miller, and Bob Slattery
ulty advisers Dan Ben Amos, Kenneth Goldstein, worked tirelessly on both filming and editing
and John Szwed (then at Temple University) sup- these productions.
ported and encouraged my research throughout At the University of Mississippi Center for the
those years. Study of Southern Culture, Ann Abadie, Peter
During the seventies, I worked with Judy Peiser Aschoff, Brenda Eagles, Sue Hart, Lisa Howorth,
at the Center for Southern Folklore in Memphis. Mary Hartwell Howorth, Ted Ownby, and Charles
We made films and developed folklore projects Wilson encouraged my work in significant ways.
that celebrated artists like Fannie Bell Chapman Successive editors of Living Blues, Jim O’Neal,
and Louis Dotson. At the center, Brenda McCal- Amy van Singel, Peter Lee, David Nelson, and
lum did beautiful work editing interviews with Brett Bonner, were important mentors. Direc-
musicians and artists—including Louis Dotson, tors of the University of Mississippi Blues Ar-
James Thomas, and Otha Turner—that appeared chive Suzanne Flandreau and Edward Komara
in Local Color: A Sense of Place in Folk Art. also provided invaluable support.
David Evans has provided counsel on this work At the University of North Carolina, my col-
since we first met in the sixties. His pioneering re- leagues have helped me in more ways than I can
search on the blues is unparalleled. As a scholar, count. Robin Chen and Steve Weiss worked tire-
teacher, and performer, David raised the bar high lessly to locate and copy materials in the Southern
for study of these worlds. Folklife Collection where my archive is housed.
Over the years my friendship with Robert Ayse Erginer, Lisa Eveleigh, Larry Griffin, Dave
Palmer and Dick Waterman has been special to Shaw, and Harry Watson worked on the publica-
me. I arranged for Bob to teach at Yale, then later tion of my B. B. King interview in Southern Cul-
at the University of Mississippi, and we shared tures. Barb Call and Reid Johnson encouraged
memorable times together in New York and Mis- and helped me on a daily basis. My wonderful
sissippi before his untimely death in 1997. Dick assistant, Dana Di Maio, provided constant, in-
Waterman has helped me understand the blues valuable support as he edited and typed correc-
from our first meeting in the sixties to the present. tions in the many drafts of my manuscript. Tom
 Acknowledgments xiii

O’Keefe did amazing work transcribing tapes and Guy Johnson launched the scholarly study of
editing field recordings. Katherine Smith helped blues when the Press published their The Negro
organize my field recordings as a graduate stu- and His Songs (1925) and Negro Workaday Songs
dent in the Curriculum in Folklore. And com- (1926). The Press also published John Hope
poser T. J. Anderson offered helpful suggestions Franklin’s first book, The Free Negro in North
about the overall work. Carolina, 1790–1860, in 1943. This important
Rich Hendel brought his keen eye for design work continues today under the able leadership
to the pages in this book and worked his magic, of the Press’s director, Kate Torrey, and its editor-
seamlessly laying out photographs and text. Gail in-chief, David Perry.
Goers digitized negatives and worked with UNC At the University of North Carolina, I have been
Press staff to assure that they could reproduce the blessed to work with Glenn Hinson, Joy Kasson,
highest-quality images in the book. Josh Guth- and Lloyd Kramer, who chair, respectively, the
man selected and digitized performances from Curriculum in Folklore, American Studies De-
original analog field recordings and from record- partment, and Department of History. I am espe-
ings issued on long-playing vinyl records that are cially grateful to John Powell, who deeply loves
included on the CD. Brian Graves reedited three the blues, generously endowed my professorship,
black-and-white Super 8 films and digitized all and made it possible for me to teach at UNC.
of the films that are included on the DVD. Aaron Finally, I want to thank three women who
Smithers gathered references for the annotated helped me see this work through to the end—
bibliography, discography, filmography, and web- my mother, Shelby Ferris; my daughter, Virginia
sites. And Rebecca Dobbs designed a Mississippi Ferris; and my wife, Marcie Ferris. Now in her
map that shows the places where speakers lived. ninetieth year, Mother always believed in my
At the University of North Carolina Press, work as a writer and is an inspiration for all that
Paula Wald gave the entire manuscript a close I do. Virginia loves all music and offered invalu-
read and made it a far tighter, better-edited text. able editorial suggestions after reading my manu-
The Press’s talented marketing staff—Dino Bat- script. And my beloved Marcie held my hand and
tista, Michael Donatelli, Chris Egan, Gina Ma- encouraged me each day as I struggled to make
halek, Ellen Bush, Laura Gribbin, Ivis Bohlen, sense of my field recordings and to frame them in
Rose Florence, and Joanne Thomas—worked a meaningful way. Marcie’s counsel, her friend-
closely with me to plan the release and promo- ship, and her love are beyond measure and are
tion of the book. And Heidi Perov and Kim Bry- reflected in every line of this work.
ant did a superb job of overseeing its production
and design, respectively. The interviews with Louis Dotson, Otha Turner,
Since its founding in 1922, the UNC Press has and James Thomas are revised from narratives
pioneered in the publication of books on African originally published in Local Color: A Sense of
American music and history. Howard Odum and Place in Folk Art, edited by Brenda McCallum
xiv Acknowledgments

(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982). The interview of the Clarksdale house party appeared in Blues
with Fannie Bell Chapman is adapted from the from the Delta (New York: Da Capo Press, 1988).
film Fannie Bell Chapman, Gospel Singer (Mem- The B. B. King interview has been reprinted in
phis: Center for Southern Folklore, 1975). The revised form from “ ‘Everything Leads Me Back to
interview with Johnny Lee Thomas appeared in the Feeling of the Blues’: B. B. King, 1974,” South-
a different form in “Have Mercy,” New Journal 6, ern Cultures 12, no. 4 (Winter 2006): 5–28. The
no. 3 (January 1973): 8–10. Quotes from the sec- Rose Hill Church service originally appeared in
tions on James Thomas, Shelby Brown, WOKJ “Rose Hill Service,” Mississippi Folklore Regis-
Radio, and Beale Street and an earlier version ter 6, no. 1 (Summer 1972): 37–56.
give
my
poor
heart
ease
0 10 20 40 60 80 Memphis

Miles Tennessee
R .
pi Mississippi

ssip
si
Mis
Holly Springs

Gravel Springs

Clarksdale
Ark
an sas
Lambert
R.
Tutwiler

Parchman

Itta Bena
Leland
Indianola
o R.
zo

a
Y

.
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Arkansas Eden
Bla

Louisiana
Big

Yazoo City .
rl R
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Vicksburg
Jackson
Ou
ach

Rose Hill
ita

R.

Lorman

Highway 61
Lake Mary
Centreville
Mississippi Featured
Louisiana Mississippi
Towns
introduction

W
hen I, a white Mississip- recordings I made in each artist’s home and com-
pian, worked as a folklorist munity. The artistically and emotionally rich pro-
in my home state in the files of musicians that emerge illuminate both the
sixties and seventies, I set African American experience and the history and
out to study African American music, but the culture of America itself.
people I met opened my eyes to much more than But here, in the introduction, I will tell you
music. Each of the musicians I was privileged to something about my own background and why
record—through interviews, sound recordings, seeking out the voices of the blues was so impor-
still photography, and film—revealed the fab- tant to me. I grew up during the forties and fifties
ric of life in their families and communities in on my family’s farm, located fifteen miles south-
powerful ways. By featuring their voices firsthand east of Vicksburg in Warren County. While my
in this book, I attempt to give the reader the op- father owned the farm and black families lived
portunity to hear, from the inside as much as pos- and worked for him on the land, both my family
sible, voices, stories, and music that are the roots and these black families had ancestral roots in
of the blues. By trying to capture the faces and the state that dated back to the nineteenth cen-
surroundings of these musicians through photo- tury.
graphs and films that complement and deepen Before telephones and television arrived in the
their recorded voices in important ways, I hope fifties, members of the community either walked
to make portraits of the speakers that respect or drove to Vicksburg on a gravel road. Today,
their entire lives and their culture. local residents still orient their lives in relation
These African American musicians speak to Fisher Ferry Road, which passes through the
about and perform musical traditions that are the farm and connects it to the outside world. Trav-
authentic roots of black music. Hailing from the elers either head “up the road” to Vicksburg or
Delta, as well as from northeastern, central, and “down the road” to the Big Black River. Residents
southern Mississippi, these musicians represent often study travelers on the road and speculate
a wide range of musical traditions that include aloud on where they are headed. Drivers, in turn,
one-strand instruments, bottle-blowing, fife and blow their horns and wave at friends who sit on
drum, hymns, spirituals, the banjo, the fiddle, and porches that face the road.
prison work chants, all of which helped define the On the farm, my family had daily, if not hourly,
blues. interactions with black families in our home and
In this volume, richly varied musical worlds in the fields. Their lives and ours were intimately
are presented through the voices of the artists linked. The farm was in fact inhabited by many
themselves. Their narratives are edited from field more black people than white people, and in im-
 Introduction

portant ways, I always felt that it was a black com- Jessie recalls that his medical bills were forgiven
munity. Our nearest white neighbors—George by the hospital because his disease was polio.
and Clara Rummage, whom we called Uncle My first sense of the existence of racism came
George and Aunt Clara—lived three miles up the at the age of five, when I entered Jefferson Davis
road. Academy, an all-white public school in Warren
When my parents drove to a party in Vicks- County where three teachers—Clara Stevens,
burg on a Saturday night, a black woman named Lucille Hilderbrand, and Gladys Barfield—
Virgil Simpson babysat us. My four siblings and taught all six grades. My friends Amos Griffin
I were quite young, and I remember my parents and William Appleton, who were children of
returned one night around midnight to find us black families living on the farm, stayed on the
all dancing with Virgil with the radio turned up farm and attended Rose Hill School, where one
full blast. They sent us straight to bed, but I never teacher—Lou Roan—taught all six grades.
forgot the association of music and dance with While traveling home on the school bus one
freedom. afternoon, we passed a black child riding a mule
Some days Virgil walked with us through pas- on the side of the road. Several children leaned
tures where we looked for guinea eggs that we out the window and yelled racist epithets at the
found in nests along fencerows. She carefully took rider, scaring him and his mule terribly. I can
the eggs out of the nests with a spoon so as not only imagine how he felt, and I know that the
to leave the scent of her hands. In the summer, scene frightened me and still haunts me today.
we went out with Virgil, Mother, and others to Another time, one of my classmates visited
gather blackberries in large briar patches. At the me on the farm, and when he saw the Rose Hill
end of an afternoon, we had filled a large washtub schoolteacher’s new car, he remarked, “That’s an
with berries that we later ate in pies and jam. awful nice car for a nigger.” And when my father
My mother and my father taught us that we improved the homes of families who worked for
should always respect others regardless of their him on the farm, my barber in Vicksburg casu-
race. My family differed from many white fami- ally remarked while cutting my hair, “I hear your
lies, southern or otherwise, in their views about daddy is fixing up those nigger houses on his
race. farm.” My parents made it clear to me and my
I remember that Jessie Cooper, a young man siblings that we were never to use that word. Its
who worked for my father, contracted polio while use always reminded me that my family and I
visiting a family near our farm. When my father were different.
learned of Jessie’s condition, he drove to Jessie’s While the ugliness of racism lingered nearby,
home with “Little” Isaiah Brown and Lou Vell my siblings and I, as children, shared a world that
Vickers, and together they carried Jessie out to was filled with natural beauty, mystery, and won-
the car and drove him to the Vicksburg hospital. der. Mother took us on walks in the woods and
 Introduct ion 

showed us green moss beneath trees where, she we set up a small darkroom where he showed me
explained, fairies came out at night and danced. how to develop black-and-white negatives and to
At picnics on the farm, she read us stories that process prints. In that room I watched the images
stirred our imagination. She took us swimming in this book appear on sheets of print paper as
in Hamer Bayou on hot summer days. Once each they steeped in the tray of processing fluid. While
week she insisted we remain quiet while she lis- Grey encouraged me in my career as a folklorist,
tened to classical music on the radio on the Fire- he also loved to tease me about how I was paid
stone Hour. to collect stories and songs, saying, “I never
A childhood friend named Tommy Curtis and knew anyone who went further on less than my
I created an imaginary world we called Wolf brother.”
Town that was located in a badly eroded part of a Though we rarely think about it, every member
pasture. It was a secret place where we imagined of my family loves to tell stories. Storytelling runs
adventures that we later described to our parents in our blood, and when we gather for holidays,
and siblings. the stories begin. They start over breakfast and
During the summer my younger brother Grey do not stop until we retire to sleep. We push back
and I worked with the men on the farm to bale sleep, not wanting to miss the end of a story.
hay, loaded the bales on a truck, and stacked For many years, each morning I have spoken
them in the barn to feed cattle and horses in the by phone with members of my family to get their
winter. Those were long, hot days broken up by latest stories. As early morning light fell across
noon dinners of fried chicken cooked by our black fields on the farm, I would speak with my mother,
housekeeper Mary Gordon and washed down Shelby Ferris, as she drank her first cup of cof-
with glasses of her sweet iced tea. Those days fee. After getting her news, I would then call my
were our father’s way of teaching us the value of brother Grey in his truck as he and “the men”—
hard work. William Appleton, Dickie Thomas, Joe Thomas,
Grey and I both raised 4-H Club calves that we and John Henry Wright—headed into the fields.
proudly exhibited at the Miss-Lou Fair, an agri- Those conversations tug at my heart and remind
cultural show held each year at the Vicksburg me that while I may live and work in other places,
fairgrounds. We had bought two registered Angus my real home is the farm. It is my spiritual com-
calves and, for a year, had groomed and taught pass.
them to stand to impress the judges. Growing So it is not surprising that the first stories I
up on the farm, I benefited from a rich web of recorded in the late fifties were from families on
friendships with carpenters, cowboys, doctors, the farm. These recordings led me up the road
electricians, farmers, hunters, lawyers, loggers, to Vicksburg and from there into the Mississippi
mechanics, painters, politicians, and teachers. Delta in the sixties. My Mississippi Delta record-
Grey taught me to use a camera, and together ings were the subject of my doctoral dissertation
 Introduction

in folklore at the University of Pennsylvania and In these towns, I recorded musicians and their
later were the focus of my teaching. In effect, I friends who gathered like a family each Saturday
did what I loved, and—to the amazement of my night at blues house parties.
parents and their friends—I found employment. I was drawn to the voices and stories of these
Throughout my life, I have traveled with a families. My recordings, photographs, and films
camera and tape recorder and tried to capture captured their faces, their homes, and their
the spoken word in all its mystery and beauty communities in ways that were unplanned. One
through tales such as the ones presented in this speaker led me to others, and together they intro-
book, tales that are both moving and chilling. As duced me to a world that was foreign to my own.
a teenager, I began to photograph speakers and I entered their homes as a guest and promised
record their stories to preserve the precious and that I would attempt to tell their stories faith-
already fleeting world of the black community on fully and fully. They understood my purpose and
the farm around me. As a college student, I was generously shared their stories and songs with
drawn into the civil rights movement and saw my me. The trust these families bestowed on me was
photographs and recordings as a way to honor a both surprising and understandable.
proud culture that stood outside the academy. I Over the past forty years, their stories have
saw my work as both a political and a cultural been an important influence on my work as a
statement. Whites often asked why I spent so folklorist. While teaching at Jackson State Uni-
much time with blacks. The implication of their versity, Yale University, the University of Missis-
question was that black lives were not worthy sippi, and the University of North Carolina and
of serious study. In the sixties black civil rights while chairing the National Endowment for the
activists faced down murderous powers, and Humanities, I continued to hear their voices.
my work as a folklorist, while it did not begin to This book brings these stories together to create
compare in terms of the danger those activists a portrait of a people, their time, and their place
faced, sometimes also took place in threatening in history. Their tales seem timeless because the
circumstances. I often saw Ku Klux Klan signs struggles, hopes, and suffering of black families
and graffiti along the roads that I traveled. For a are familiar themes in our culture. From slavery
white southerner, the work I did was considered to Reconstruction, from the Jim Crow era to the
taboo. civil rights movement, from the 1927 Mississippi
The worlds of the Mississippi Delta blues mu- River flood to Hurricane Katrina, tales endure
sicians whom I recorded and filmed as a gradu- in black families and resonate with the power of
ate student in folklore in the late sixties was dra- oral tradition. Throughout black history, these
matically different from those I had known on stories persist, and their telling becomes a means
the farm where I grew up. With angry voices, of survival. Today, as Barack Obama assumes the
speakers described the conditions they had en- mantle of our nation’s first black president, this
dured in Delta towns like Clarksdale and Leland. history takes a dramatic turn that will inspire
 Introduct ion 

stories and music in exciting new ways. It is a mo- they kill three civil rights workers, and the Jews
ment many have dreamed of. outnumber the blacks, it is time we speak out.”
My parents, William and Shelby Ferris, and When I was discharged from the army as a
my siblings, Shelby, Hester, Grey, and Martha, conscientious objector during the Vietnam War
understood the journey that led me to this book, in 1969, my family again understood and sup-
and their support set us apart from other white ported me. After dismissal from the military, I
families in our community. While an under- taught at Jackson State University and lived in
graduate student at Davidson College from 1960 Jackson on Guynes Street, two doors from the
to 1964, I helped organize civil rights marches in home where Medgar Evers was assassinated.
Charlotte, North Carolina. Other Davidson stu- My parents and siblings visited my home, met
dents and I met on campus with Allard Lowen- my black friends, and respected and blessed my
stein and James Farmer and tried to desegregate journey. They understood that I inherited my
both the college and local churches. During this commitment to education from generations of
time, my parents received an anonymous post- teachers in our family. I found that the natural
card telling them that I was “dating niggers.” focus for my study and teaching was the people
My siblings and several other local white stu- and places I knew as I was growing up.
dents met with Robert Moses in Vicksburg dur- The farm has always been the center of my life,
ing the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964. and the families who lived there shaped me in en-
My father was the only white adult who joined us. during ways. My roots on the farm were grounded
He was genuinely curious and questioned Moses at the dinner table, where Mary Gordon cared for
about the civil rights movement and his work. our family throughout her lifetime. I remember
Moses told my father that the meeting was the her voice and the rich language of her stories and
first time he had sat across the table from and had hymns that I heard each day from childhood.
a conversation with a white Mississippian. After Our last visit was in a nursing home in Vicksburg
that evening, Ku Klux Klan flyers were thrown on shortly before her death. Her family sat with her,
the ground near our mailbox. and when I rose to leave, she hugged me and said,
In Vicksburg, there were several places where “You know, you are my white child.” I answered,
we could speak openly about the movement. “I know.” Looking back, I realize that our worlds
One was the COFO house, an old home in a black were so very different, but we connected in a
neighborhood rented by the Council of Feder- special way during that final visit in the nursing
ated Organizations, where we visited with Paul home.
Cowan and others during the Mississippi Free- The farm is where I first heard the voices of
dom Summer. We also attended services at the my own family and of the black community in
Anshe Chesed Temple, where, after the deaths of which we lived. I have long wrestled with how to
James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael connect myself to these stories. How can I ani-
Schwerner, Rabbi Alvin Blinder declared, “When mate the voices of the storytellers? How can I ex-
 Introduction

plain the motivation that led me to record their a total stranger. When I knocked at the speakers’
worlds? These recordings were my lifeline, and I doors, they welcomed me and encouraged me to
made myself promise that I would never forget learn from elders whose voices are the heart of
the speakers who taught me in such deeply mov- this book. As Reverend Isaac Thomas said to me,
ing, sometimes frightening ways. “The door here swings on the hinge of good wel-
The power of place was embedded in me as I come at all time.”
grew up on our family farm through the beauty I found a narrative that served as the door
of its changing seasons and its deep ties to his- through which I discovered the cultures of the
tory. Local legend claimed that treasure stolen by American South. I erected my own brush-arbor
the nineteenth-century robbers Samuel Mason shelter through which I wandered into the re-
and Wiley “Little” Harpe from travelers on the gion’s history and culture and explored its art,
nearby Natchez Trace was buried on the farm. As folklore, history, music, and religion. I connected
a child, I saw a deep hole that had been dug the to an oral tradition of many thousands gone
night before in the yard of a home on the farm whose spirits inspired my work.
by someone looking for that treasure. Years later, As I tried to find my voice as a writer—first of
beginning in high school, I dug for a different fiction, then of folklore—the voices I heard as a
kind of treasure in that same community using child always remained in my ear. They were like
my tape recorder and camera. This work captures teachers who led me as a white person to embrace
a journey that began with my birth in 1942 on the black culture. These voices were the beacon that
farm to which I continue to return several times led me into a territory that was forbidden, some-
a year. Those childhood roots led me to record, times dangerous, yet intimately interwoven with
photograph, and film worlds that I continue to my own life. Barred by segregation from entering
study today. As a child, teenager, and adult, I saw these worlds, I went against the grain as I em-
music as a bridge that allowed me to connect to braced the rich stories that follow.
the black community. As I worked within the black community in the
Looking back on the speakers in this work, sixties, I realized that I could not rely on introduc-
I want to frame them in terms of both my own tions by local whites. During one painful intro-
life and their own. In the process of making my duction, a white farmer agreed to let me record a
recordings in the Mississippi Delta in the six- black musician who worked for him. He told me
ties, I returned periodically to the family farm to meet him at the musician’s home that evening.
to develop film and transcribe interviews. The I arrived at the home and found the farmer and
fieldwork was emotionally exhausting, so I took several other whites there. Rifles hung from rear-
breaks to gather my thoughts and strength before window racks in their pickup trucks, and they
returning to the Delta to continue the journey. were standing together admiring a gun when I
Some of the worlds described by the speakers were arrived.
intimately familiar to me, and others I entered as After greeting me, the farmer called the musi-
 Introduct ion 

cian. When he did not come to the door, the farmer entering black homes and sharing meals with
threw rocks on his tin roof. The singer emerged black families, I broke racial taboos that were in-
and sang several songs on his front porch while grained in the lives of white and black southern-
the whites watched him from their trucks. Then ers from childhood. When blacks saw that I was
he complained that his finger was cramped, and willing to break traditional taboos to be a part
he refused to play anymore. The white men went of their lives, they accepted the integrity of my
home, and I made an appointment to meet the work and did everything possible to assist me. I
musician at the home of another black singer the felt I became a friend rather than a “white man”
following night. and was often called “soul brother” or “brother”
The next night he played at length, and toward by teenagers in the black communities where I
the end of the session, he began drinking whis- worked.
key, cursed his white boss, and told me that he During the telling of a racial joke directed
owned the farm where he worked. He told me against whites, the eyes of the audience followed
that the next time I came to town, I could come to my reaction to the joke. My laughter indicated
his home and eat and sleep there if I wished. He sympathy with the black protagonist in the joke
swore he would see that I was safe when I entered and bonded us. Once this rapport was estab-
his home. I recorded his conversation and was lished, recording sessions became much more
moved by his courage in defying his boss: spontaneous, and I could enter blues juke joints
and record in an optimum context.
Next time you come, come on to my house
I explained my work and asked speakers if
and walk right on in. If I eat a piece of bread,
they would like to be part of a project to record
you eat too. I’m the boss of that whole place
their music and stories. They were surprised that
over there. I don’t know how many acres it
a book might be written about their daily lives,
is. You ain’t got to ask none of these white
which they assumed held little interest outside
folks about coming to my house. Any time
their own community.
you come to my house, and I ain’t there, stay
I bought groceries for families in exchange for
right there until I come. Don’t leave. I’m
the hospitality they showed me, and when I at-
coming back, because I’ve gone to get some
tended religious services, I made offerings to the
pussy, and I’ll be back in a minute. Any time
congregation. I also sent my photographs to the
you want to come down here, you drive to my
speakers with a note of thanks for their support,
damn house. Ain’t a damn soul gonner fuck
and they displayed them in their homes. When
with you, white or black.
I returned to their homes again, I was touched
After that experience, I entered the black com- by the effect my letters and photographs had on
munity without contacting local whites. In doing families.
so, I exposed myself to the possibility of arrest, I did my fieldwork with a Sony half-track reel-
and my black friends were well aware of this. By to-reel tape recorder, two Electrovoice direc-
 Introduction

tional microphones with stands, a Pentax 35mm I began using black-and-white Super 8 motion
camera, a Sony Super 8 movie camera, and two picture film in June 1968. The drama of a blues
snap-on 200 watt lightbulbs for interior filming, singer performing in a juke joint on a Saturday
all of which I viewed as essential. I operated all night for local dancers could not be adequately
of the equipment myself during each recording captured by sound recordings, still photography,
session. I first set up the recorder and then made and verbal descriptions. Equally dramatic were
still and motion pictures of events, while talking the religious services with the preachers’ chanted
with friends in the room. sermons and the women who “fall out” in ecstasy
I traveled in an old Chevrolet Nova and kept and have to be carried outside to cool down.
my equipment in the trunk. A long metal tool After working in both juke joints and churches,
chest with a removable top drawer contained my I saw how they were interrelated and central to
microphones, cables, electrical extension cords, the black community. Film was the best way to
and blank recording tape and film. I learned to make a permanent record of their drama and
quickly set up my equipment and begin recording beauty. I used sound recordings, still photogra-
and filming. phy, and film to create the broadest portrait of
Later in the evening, after the recording ses- speakers and their families in these worlds.
sion had ended, I took out pen and paper to write This book first explores the musical roots of
my thoughts about the day’s work. This was the the blues, starting with the stories and hymns of
most tiring part of the day, but this documenta- Mary Gordon and Reverend Isaac Thomas in the
tion while the events were still fresh in my mind Rose Hill community. The voices of Scott Dun-
was essential to my fieldwork. There were always bar (traditional songster), Louis Dotson (one-
dramatic moments that I felt sure I would never strand guitar player), Fannie Bell Chapman
forget, but without these notes, I realize that many (gospel singer and faith healer), Otha Turner
details would have slipped from my ­memory. (fife player), Johnny Lee “Have Mercy” Thomas
In taking photographs I shot Tri-X black-and- (former Parchman Penitentiary inmate), Tom
white film. I did my own developing and was able Dumas (fiddle and banjo player), and Lee Kizart
to make prints to my own taste at a considerable (blues pianist), among others, come next. Each
financial savings. I always took portraits of the speaker describes musical traditions that shaped
speaker’s face. If he or she sang or danced, I took the blues in significant ways.
wider shots, and I used a strobe flash unit for The book’s second section is set in black neigh-
interior pictures. Inside homes, I photographed borhoods like Kent’s Alley in Leland and the
furniture, pictures on walls, medical supplies, Brickyard in Clarksdale where the blues devel-
and food to record the household inventory. oped in dramatic ways. In Leland, we meet James
Outside the home, I photographed streets and “Son Ford” Thomas, Gussie Tobe, and Shelby
fields to give a feeling for the community and the “Poppa Jazz” Brown; in Clarksdale, Jasper Love
countryside in which the speakers lived. and Wade Walton; in Jackson, WOKJ radio an-
 Introduct ion 

nouncer Bruce Payne; and in Memphis, clothing tions offer a portrait of the blues and of the worlds
salesman Robert Shaw. that shaped the music. The book closes with a
The third section looks back on the blues selected bibliography, discography, filmography,
through two of the most significant figures in and list of websites that helps frame the lives of
blues history: composer and performer Willie these musicians and their music. As a teacher
Dixon and performer B. B. King. and scholar, I know the importance that publi-
The fourth and final section joins sacred and cations, sound recordings, films, and websites
secular worlds by presenting a Rose Hill church have for both classroom teaching and scholarly
service and a Clarksdale blues house party, each research.
of which celebrates and affirms the spirit in dis- This book also includes a cd and a dvd with
tinctive ways. field recordings and documentary films that
Each speaker’s narrative is transcribed from feature many of the speakers. The films range
my field recordings. In some cases I worked with from early black-and-white Super 8 film with-
many hours of recordings, and in other cases, very out synchronized sound to 16mm color film with
few. Some names mentioned in the narratives synchronized sound. Through the book and the
have been changed. As in the films and sound accompanying cd and dvd, the reader will en-
recordings that accompany this book, my voice is counter performers and speakers whose lives
not included in the published text. Instead, I try shaped the roots of American music. While most
to present an authentic, flowing, dramatic mono- of the speakers are no longer alive, their voices
logue, a narrative that has both literary and docu- bear intimate witness to a world of beauty, pain,
mentary value. and sadness that defined the blues.
Together, speakers in each of these four sec-
This page intentionally left blank
Blues
Roots
Blues and sacred music are joined at the hip. Most blues musicians
grow up in the church where as children they learn to sing hymns and
spirituals. One blues musician told me that if a singer wants to cross
over from sacred music to the blues, he simply replaces “my God” with
“my baby” and continues singing the same song. Our journey through
blues roots begins with the stories and hymns of Mary Gordon and her
minister in the Rose Hill community, Reverend Isaac Thomas.
We then visit musicians who perform with instruments that shaped the
blues. The sounds of the one-strand-on-the-wall, fife and drum, piano,
fiddle, and banjo; gospel songs; and prison work chants all echo the blues
in special ways. Together, the voices in this section make up a chorus that
describes the roots of the blues in rural Mississippi. Both the music and
the lives of these speakers help us understand the complex, rich story of
blues roots.
This page intentionally left blank
 13

rose hill
Mary “Monk” Gordon and Reverend Isaac Thomas were two of the most
important leaders in the Rose Hill community, fifteen miles southeast of
Vicksburg. Gordon told me that her grandmother was a slave who walked
from Natchez to the Rose Hill community. She and many of Gordon’s other
ancestors are buried on the hillside around Rose Hill Church.
Mary Gordon often sang church hymns while working in her garden or
doing housework and was deeply attached to the history of Rose Hill Church.
As a young woman, she had religious visions that she interpreted as signs
that she should join the church. One of these visions foretold the birth of her
daughter. She also sang a parody of preachers entitled “You Shall Be Free.”
When she sang it for me, she asked that I not let Reverend Thomas hear it.
Reverend Isaac Thomas lived in Vicksburg and preached at Rose Hill
Church on the first Sunday of every month. He served four churches
by preaching in one each Sunday of the month. During his childhood he
preached funerals for animals that died, so it was only natural that as an
adult he entered the ministry. He was the last in a line of preachers who
served Rose Hill Church for over 150 years. After his death, the church was
used primarily for funerals of deceased members who are buried in its ceme-
tery.
These interviews were recorded in 1974 during the filming of Two Black
Churches. Mary Gordon spoke on the porch of the home of her stepmother,
Amanda Gordon, and Reverend Thomas spoke from his chair behind the
pulpit in Rose Hill Church.
 15

mary gordon

That church was there many years before I was born and raised here, and when they joined the
born. My grandfathers and great-grandfathers church, they joined this church. All their rela-
helped build it. They say they first started the tives are buried up there. When people go away
church up there on that hill when they made a from here and they die, they want their bodies
little brush arbor, and they started singing and to come back here where their mother, father,
praying. So many people started coming in and and all their relatives are. That’s why they brings
joining the church, until they got enough mem- them back. Some of them make a request that
bers to fill a little small church. And when they they want to go back home, you know, when
built the little small church on the hill, they got they die. So their families will bring them back
more and more members. Then they made it and bury them up on Rose Hill.
a larger and larger church. There was so many When I die, heaven will be my home. It will
people that come in, that they would sit out be my home. All you have to do is believe and be
among the roses up there on the hill. Big beau- baptized. Just believe that Jesus will save you.
tiful roses, everybody had roses up on the hill. He will save you if you believe that and if you die
So that’s where Rose Hill Church got its name with that belief.
from. There were so many roses up there. That I sing the hymns anywhere—out in the field
was before I was born, and I’ve been going there or in the house. When you have a real service,
ever since I was born. you sing them in the church. But anytime I feel
When people die in the North and they be- like singing, I just sing. It makes me feel good,
long to this church here, if the relatives is able, singing. I always did love to be around the house
they will send them back here, and they will be singing. When I’m singing, I’m feeling jolly and
buried up there. There isn’t any place you can happy, and it makes me feel good.
walk up on that hill that you aren’t walking over When people are in church and get the spirit,
somebody that is buried. I know so many, and they get full up. Some of them jumps up and
there was so many before I was born—my father makes a loud noise. I never do that. I never
and his family, my mother and her family. I got make a lot of hollering and jump up. When I
a brother too. I got lots of relatives up on that feel the spirit, it brings tears to my eyes. You feel
hill. My mother and father, brother, and lots of sorry for yourself, I guess. I don’t know what it
uncles and aunts and others all up on the hill is. It just hits you somewhere and makes you
there. feel sorry for yourself.
People who live in Chicago want to be buried I know what to sing, and it’s always some-
here because this is their home. They were thing about the Lord. Whether I’m home, in the

Mary Gordon, Rose Hill, 1978

▲
16 Blues Roots

Mary Gordon, Rose Hill, 1978

church, anywhere, I believe in Jesus, and I be- ing. There was four mens in there, and Dad and
lieve that when the Lord call me home, I’ll see I were sitting in the rear of the church. He said
Him when I leave here. I’m looking to see Jesus to me, “Do you know any of us here?”
in my whole heart and eyes. I’ve seen Him in a I got up and walked up close to Him, and I
dream, but I have never seen Him in person. said, “I don’t know their names, but this is Jesus
I dreamed I saw Him come in the church here.”
down here. When I looked out the side door, He looked at me, and He smiled. He said,
I saw four men on a round chair like a couch “This is Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
coming right across the paths. I was standing in He asked where the Sunday school books
the door at the church. That couch didn’t have were, and I told Him, “Well we don’t have no
wheels on it. It was just coming on in. It come books, but we have Bibles when we come to
on in the side door and angled right across the Sunday school.”
pulpit up there where the preacher was stand- Four white men, I don’t know how they ever
 Rose H ill 17

got in there. It looked just like a couch. Big I said, “That’s Jesus.”
enough for the four mens to get into. And He I say, “Don’t you know Him?”
told me the others were Abraham, Isaac, and I say, “That’s Jesus.”
Jacob, and He was Jesus. They were sitting right And He just walked on in the cloud. Walked
down there in that church. That was a dream. on until He vanished away. He had long hair
That’s been many years ago, and I don’t never with a long white coat on. He was a white man
forget about it. I will never forget it. with a long white robe. He didn’t say anything.
I dreamed that a house was up on the hill He was just standing in the air walking.
when I was a little girl. There was nothing else And I dreamed I saw Jesus’s mother too.
but bushes all before I was born. I dreamed I prayed and asked the Lord to show me His
there was a house on that hill, and I was up mother. And I saw her. She was riding way
there in it. We was walking through the hall. We yonder in the east, in the sky, and she was on
was walking side by side. She had one of those something like a train. When she passed, the
high-posted beds in the front room with the window opened, and I saw her from her head to
white cotton spread. Those white spreads with her waist. She just looked out. She looked like a
the fringes all around it. When me and her was large stout woman. Mary, the mother of Jesus, I
walking up the hall, she looked at me and said, saw her.
“This is your house.” That was in a dream now. Nobody ever seen
But there was no house up there at all at that Jesus with the natural eye. Least I ain’t never
time. As I was walking up the hall, she said, heard nobody said they did. If you ask the Lord
“This is your house.” to show you something in a dream and He show
That’s been a long time ago. There wasn’t a it, then you got to get up and tell the church
house up there. We used to go there picking ber- about it. Then you just believe on that, and you
ries and sour grass. Going to school, we used to will be baptized and you will still believe on
go there and play all the time. I dreamed about that until you die. That’s what you call a Baptist
that house up on the hill, but it was a good believer. And that’s what we are, Baptists. You
many years ago. believe on the Lord, Jesus Christ, with all your
I dreamed I saw Jesus. Looked like He was soul and heart and don’t ever get off of it. You
walking in clouds. He was way up in the sky. can’t never turn back off of that. Just stay on it.
He had on a long white coat, and He was bare- And I always will believe in Jesus.
feeted. I could see His bare feets, but I couldn’t One day I was standing in the kitchen, in the
see nothing under them. He was just walking, back door, looking at the sun when it come up in
walking along in the air with a white coat touch- the morning. I always get up early in the morn-
ing down along His feet. One of my cousins ing and watch the sun turn different colors. I
come out, and she say, “Look a’yonder. Who is was standing there, and all at once the sun got
that?” strong to my eyes, and I closed my eyes. And
18 Blues Roots

when I closed my eyes, I saw Jesus in the sun was just dancing and twisting, you know. It’s
just hanging on the cross, both arms stretched. strange, but that’s the truth.
He was nailed to the cross, and His head was So I got back onto that road. And when I
laying with the locks on His shoulders and the got to the crossroads, I didn’t know which way
crown of thorns on His head just as plain as I’m to go. I looked back at the house, and I knew
looking at you now. But I wasn’t asleep. I was I couldn’t go that way, didn’t want to go that
standing in the door, looking at the sun. And way. So I got in the crossroads. There was a gate
every time I would close my eyes, I could see it in the middle of this crossroads. One road was
again. When I opened my eyes wide, I couldn’t going this way. One road was going that way.
see it. If I closed my eyes just about like halfway, And a tall gate was there. I had to choose the
I saw Him again. I saw Him three times hang- road I wanted to take. So on the other side of
ing there, and I got nervous. I walked out the the gate, it was three great big black bulls, and
back door, went on around the side of the house, the road I wanted to take was the one those
and I stood around the side of the house. I shut bulls were standing in. I didn’t know what to do,
my eyes again, and I saw the same thing. I wanted to get in that road. So I said, “Lord, I
So I stood there a few minutes. Then I went don’t know what to do.”
on around to the front door, walked on inside I was scared of those bulls on the other side,
the house, and I sat down on the little stool. but I had to go that way. I put my hand on the
I closed my eyes. I saw Him again. I sat there gate, and I climbed up one panel. Then I got
with my eyes closed until He got out of my sight. onto the top. I got to sit astraddle of the gate. I
Then I opened my eyes, closed them again, and was on one side looking this way, and I looked
I ain’t seen Him no more from that day to this. I the other way where the music was. Something
been getting up on Sunday mornings and watch- told me I got to go this way, got to go down be-
ing the sun to see if I could see Him again. But tween them bulls. I put one foot on the middle
I can’t see Him no more. Now I didn’t dream of the panel, and I looked back at the bulls. I
that. I saw that, just like me and you sitting here got down there, and I was trembling. I was so
talking. scared, and I put my feet on the ground between
I dreamed of a vision when I was trying to those bulls. When I put my feet on the ground,
pray. It seemed to me like I left home wander- it looked like the bulls just got congealed. They
ing, and I got in a little roadway. And this little didn’t move. I walked on through them. I got a
road led me to a crossroads. I used to love to little piece down the road, and I looked back. It
dance. And when I got to the crossroads, I heard was nearly about night, and I had to make it to
guitar picking. It seemed to me like it was a where I was going. I got on a little narrow road,
house on a hill, and they was picking guitars up looked like it just about that wide. On the east
there. They was out on the porch trying to tempt side of that road there was something growing
me in. It was a real fat lady come out there. She like wheat, and I had to go through it. When I
 Rose H ill 19

got in there, every time I’d make a step, it was in the bed. That was in 1920. That’s when that
a big snake would rise up on this side. I had a happened, nineteen and twenty. And I ain’t
stick, and I’d hit it. I’d take another step, and forgot it yet. Never will, I don’t think. Never will
one would rise on this side. I hit it. I was fight- forget that.
ing and fighting and fighting until I saw George Everybody just looked like one solid color,
Carter, a man I had asked to pray for me. I saw white people with hair just wavy. Everybody had
him coming through this wheat. He was coming, it. Everybody looked just alike. It was so many
and he had a big stick. He started helping me to people that you just couldn’t get through them.
fight, and I was fighting and fighting and fight- I just got to the door. When I said, “Howdy,
ing. Mother,” they all went to singing real low,
After a while I looked, and I saw a man come “Howdy, Mother. Howdy, howdy, Mother.”
out of the sun when the sun rose. He was riding It had a little motion to it, saying, “Howdy,
a white horse, and his horse was just leaping. Mother. Howdy, Mother, howdy.”
That horse was leaping. The man on the white Since I waked up, I hadn’t seen that vision no
horse had long pretty hair, and his horse had more. But it always stays in my mind. I won’t
a pretty mane. When he come up to me, he ever get it out. I think I’ll go home to God with
reached his hand out. I handed him my hand, that same vision. It makes you feel funny when
and he took me up on that horse. When he was you start to talking about it. But I tell you, I
taking me up on that horse, the snakes was know that happened when I was praying, try-
rearing up at my feet. He just lifted me up and ing to get religion. That was when I saw that
carried me to a great big building. He put me vision, and it never has left me. I hope I’m going
off in that building, and I walked to the door. It to keep the faith so I can meet the man on the
looked like a big church. I knocked on the door, horse when I leave here. I want him to meet me
and when the door opened, my mother opened on that same horse and take me on home.
the door. When she opened the door, I walked I was walking down the road one day, and I
in. I said, “Howdy.” was thinking I didn’t have no children at all. So
The whole building was full of people in I said to myself, “I ain’t got nobody.”
there. They said, “Howdy, Mother. Howdy. I said, “Lord, I wonder why I don’t have a
Howdy, Mother. Howdy. Howdy, Mother.” child.”
That’s all they was saying, “Howdy, Mother. I said, “Lord, would you just give me one
Howdy.” child?”
And by the time they quit speaking, every- I said, “I’d be satisfied with just one.”
body in the building looked just alike. Wasn’t That night I dreamed I had a little baby. I
nobody in there different. Everybody looked just found the baby sitting in a stump. A lot of green
alike. When I got to the end of that dream, my vines was growed all around that stump. I went
eyes flew open, and I found I was still at home and looked over in there, and there was a little
20 Blues Roots

baby, pretty little old baby. I went down and I laughed about it, and I went on. And sure
said, “This is my baby.” enough, I had a little girl. That’s all I had, just
I picked the baby up, and I carried the baby that one. It seems like I saw some more chil-
home with me. I was standing right there when dren, but they was in a house. I was up in a
he cried. building, and they was down on the ground
When I waked up that morning, I thought reaching they hands up to me. And every time
sure I had the baby in the bed with me. I was I’d come down a step, the little baby would be so
laying there, and it looked like a lady came, and low he couldn’t get up. I’d reach down a hand to
she told me I couldn’t eat anything but rice. It try to get him up. I had to step, step, step, until
looked like somebody was in the kitchen fixing I come to the bottom. And there at the bottom,
me some rice, and I was in the bed. I waked up I got this other little girl. And looked like when I
real good, and I said, “I ain’t got no baby. Let me went on up in that building, all those little chil-
get up from here.” dren was outside playing. I said, “No, all them
I got up and went and put my clothes on. I wasn’t my children, but I guess they grandchil-
set around thinking about the baby. It was the dren.”
next year before the baby was born. I think that That’s what I got. I got one child and a bunch
must have been the same baby. I reckon it must of grandchildren. I dreamed about that. So I say,
have been. I saw her before she was born, and it “That’s the way it worked out. It worked out just
looked like they said, “That’s your baby.” fine.”
I just couldn’t believe that I was going to Sometimes the women used to be together
have a baby. I never did have in mind that I quilting at night. We used to quilt before we got
ever would have a child. But I wanted one. And electric lights. We used tin lights, those small tin
so when I first came pregnant with the child, I lights. They would have them sitting all over the
kinda got worried. I didn’t know. I said, “Now quilt. Maybe one of the lamps would be sitting
what is it I’m gonna do with this baby? I can’t do on the shelf or down on the table, somewhere
nothing with this child.” close around where everybody could see. Then
I was telling another lady about it, and she when they couldn’t see to thread the needle,
say, “Aaww, you oughtn’t to have no baby. You they had to get the children. The young children
oughta do away with it.” would thread needles. Maybe some of the old
I walked on away from her. I said, “If I have ones would get up and get them a cup of coffee
it, I’ll be glad of it.” to drink at night. Then the ladies would invite
So I went to the doctor, and the doctor told one another around during the daytime to help,
me I was pregnant. He said, “If you don’t believe you know, on the quilt.
me, you come back here in about nine months Blue is my favorite color. If you want to have
time.” a lively quilt, you put red, like these here. Some-
 Rose H ill 21

times you make it out of just two colors, red Lord to forgive me, but I got to get saintly sorry
and white or red and blue, and make a quilt out for what I done. When you first join the church,
of it. Most the time you make the quilt from you ask the Lord to forgive you for your sins.
scraps. You put the pieces together, and they When we sing in the church, somebody have
make a nice big quilt. It takes time—about two to bass, and somebody have to alto, and some-
weeks—to get them together. I’ve tried to get body have to lead. See, if you lead, somebody
one together. It takes me a long time. I don’t have to come along behind you and catch these
like quilting on red or quilting on blue because songs. You just can’t sing them all—lead and
it shows your stitches too much. If you have a alto and bass—all together. It usually takes
flower pattern, it won’t show so many stitches. three voices to make it sound right.
But if you just use solid red or blue color, it will They would teach you how to do it. You
show up all the white stitches. would get a musicianer to come in, and they
With this here print, you make a little block would teach you the song. A musicianer is some-
like that and sew them on and on. Then you body would come in who already know how
have the quilt. We call it a scrap wheel. We go to play a piano and already know all the notes
around picking up pieces from almost any place. about a song. They come and teach you the
When you cut your dress out, you have some words and how to put the tune and the sound
pieces left. You put them all together and make to the words you sing in the song. That’s what
a long row. You put little bits of pieces between we did. We had a lady by the name of Miss Cora
those, and you make a full quilt out of it. It’s used to come in and sing for us. But Miss Cora
very tedious. But it seems like it’s nothing but dead now. She lived at Waterville. All the teach-
a smile to her [Amanda Gordon] because she ers what I used to know passed. All of them
loves to do it. dead now. But they was good teachers at the
Before you join the church, you got to believe time.
that Jesus died for you. You got to believe it A Dr. Watts hymn is a good hymn to sing. It
deep from your heart. And then you got to get makes you feel happy. When the people didn’t
on your knees and go to the Lord and ask Him know how to sing, there was a man, I think he
to forgive you for everything that you have did must have been named Watts, and he would
wrong. You ask Him to forgive you for it, and lead these songs like, “I’m gonna tell my Lord
you ask Him until the tears come outta your when I go home.”
eyes. Just like if I go down there and do some- All the congregation would join in and sing
thing wrong to you, and then I get sorry for it. the same thing that he would sing. Everybody
Then I come down there and beg your pardon sings those songs, and they call them Dr. Watts
for it. hymns because Dr. Watts must have been the
Well that’s the way I believe in it. I ask the first one started the music. When I got here,
22 Blues Roots

that’s the way people were singing. They called They was talking over my melons,
them Dr. Watts hymns before I was born. You shall be free.
When you’re baptized, you get up and confess Save my rind, brother,
that you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who You shall be free.
saves you in your dying hour. You tell that to the Save my vines,
public. You let everybody know that you believe You shall be free.
that Jesus will save you in your dying hour. Then Oh, when the Good Lord sets you free.
you get up, and the preacher comes around and
asks you who you believe in. You tell him you See that preacher laying behind the log,
believe in Jesus, and then you actually become a Finger on the trigger, got his eye on the hog.
Christian, and they take you in the church. Then The gun says boom, the hog says bop.
on Sunday, the believer gets ready to go down to He jumped on the hog with all his grip.
the water. They tell everybody that they believe He had pork chops,
that Jesus died for their sins and that they want You shall be free.
to be baptized. Then they baptize you in the He had back bones, he had chitterlings,
name of the Lord, the Father, and the Son and You shall be free.
the Holy Ghost. That’s the way we baptize. Oh, when the Good Lord sets you free.
If I sing this song, don’t you let my pastor The rooster and the preacher had a falling
hear it. Oh Jesus, it’s an old one.
out.
Our Father, who art in Heaven. The rooster kicked the preacher clean out of
Preacher owed me ten dollars, sight.
He paid me seven. The preacher told the rooster, say,
Kingdom come, your will be done. “That’s alright.
If I hadn’t took the seven, “I’ll meet you at the hen house tomorrow
I wouldn’t have got none. night
“With a croker sack.
I had a fight about my money, “I’ll have chicken pie,”
What he owed me, You shall be free.
You shall be free. Oh, when the Good Lord sets you free.

Some people tell me that a preacher won’t When I first moved to Memphis, Tennessee,
steal. I was crazy about the preacher as I could be.
Caught about seven in my watermelon field, I went out on my front porch walking around.
Just a’crushing and a’slicing, I invite the preacher over to my house,
Tearing up my vines. Washed his face, combed his head.
 Rose H ill 23

Next thing he wanted to do was slip in my Don’t allow . . .

bed. Oh, when the Good Lord sets you free.
I caught him by the head, man, and kicked
him out the door. I don’t want Reverend Thomas to hear me sing-
I don’t allow no preachers around my house ing that. [Laughs.]
no more.
24

reverend isaac thomas

My calling was something like Moses when he their name, but they were profound preachers
was called to go down into the land of Egypt to because God gave them the calling from their
bring his people out. When I heard this calling hearts. Those that went to school, you could
from God, I didn’t think this job was for me. make a rag doll out of them because they just
But at the end, I heard the voice just like I hear don’t have the calling. It takes spirit to indulge
your voice. And when I asked Him, I said, “Now the sermon. A sermon is a spoken communica-
Lord, I feel my insufficiency. Would you have me tion with divine persuasion. That moves people
preach your word?” from doing wrong to doing right.
Then I saw Him in a vision as I am looking Now, anytime that the blood as we talked
at you. He spoke to me the Christian way, as a about today has been applied to you, you are
revelation. truly saved. You know, not everybody is saved.
Sometimes you have a prepared sermon, and Some people just say they are saved. But I mean,
that’s how you train yourself. Sometimes I use a when you have been truly saved by grace, then
prepared sermon. But most generally, according you have a wireless phone. There’s no wire hang-
to the scripture, He say, “Open your mouth and ing like you see on these here. It’s something you
I’ll speak through you.” can communicate with, between you and God.
Then if you study God’s word, then it will be- You can talk with Him. You can lay up in your
come a part of you, and you don’t need no paper bed any hour, midnight, before day in the morn-
to get it on. ing, and you can talk to God. That’s the wireless
There is a difference between preachers of the telephone working. His line never gets busy. He
book and preachers of the spirit. The preacher always has time to see what you want. He hears
of the book is a preacher that goes off to school the groan from the church. He loves the church.
and prepares himself. He gets well versed and He died for the church, and therefore he loves it.
well qualified, so he can come back and com- Several times I have seen Him with the eye
pile a sermon. But that’s not the spirit of God. of faith. You know, anybody that stays close to
The Book says many are called, but few chosen. God, and walks with God, and stays meek and
But very few are chosen preachers. You can find humble in prayer, He will carry them away.
plenty of them out there, prepared preachers Sometimes He will carry them away into a
who think they can go to school and get their vision land, and He will show many things that
master’s and doctor’s and come back to preach. are pertaining to the spiritual life. I saw Jesus
But that’s not true. You may not know A from standing in the air. I saw that. He was standing
B. If God call you to preach, you can preach. with a long white robe, a circle around His head,
I know several preachers who hardly know standing in the air. He wasn’t standing on noth-

Reverend Isaac Thomas, Rose Hill, 1968

▲
26 Blues Roots

ing, just standing in the air. That’s revelation, didn’t know that I was carrying the word with
you know. I seen that with the natural eye. me all the time I was looking for it.
Another revelation I saw was a ball of fire. I At baptism, it’s almost something like con-
used to read often about the consummation of version. If you would allow me to go back a little
the world. What I mean by that is, the end of bit on that baptism, you know during that time,
the world. I used to read often about that. And I think fifty-six of us went down in the water
reading about these things, the more likely you that Sunday. And the minister, he told us to pray
are to dream about them. Anything you read again. He said, “Now you all gonna join church,
about and boil down to a real hard sincere study, and I want you to pray again and ask the Lord is
well, quite naturally you gonna have a dream. you worthy to be baptized.”
You’ll have a dream about what you’re doing. So I prayed. That’s what made me so happy
I had a zeal in me when I was five or six that morning when I was going to the water.
years old to preach, but I really didn’t think The Lord showed me in a dream that we would
it would lead up to the position which I hold be marching in white and would be paired off
now. I didn’t have no idea of that at the time. two by two. The Lord showed me that. That give
Everything that would die that our parents was me more confidence to step further out on His
raising—animals or chickens—almost anything word. And when I was baptized that Sunday
that would die, I’d have church over. I’d have a morning, I felt brand-new again. I felt good. I
funeral, and I would always be the preacher to felt like shouting, as they say.
preach those animals’ funerals. What happens in a sermon would be hard to
It rocked on from there. I was very interested explain when you have never felt the visitation
in church back in that day and time. We wasn’t of the spirit. It would be a little hard because it’s
enlightened like we are today about the Bible. a feeling that you never felt before. When you
We teach according to the Bible now. He that get happy, you feel different from the way you
believe and is baptized shall be saved. felt before. It’s a different feeling, this spiritual
During that time, they were preaching and feeling for a conversion. I think Isaac Watts
praying on the ground and on down through caught a glimpse of that when he said, “How
the woods and different places, trying to find precious did that grace appear, the hour I first
the Lord. And I went down there several times believed.”
trying to find Him, but I never did run up on That’s a precious moment, when you be-
Him down there in those woods. I didn’t have lieve God’s word. It changes things. Everything
the knowledge to know that I was carrying Him changes. Everything looks new when you believe
along with me, because the tenth chapter of on God’s word. That’s the way that works.
Romans says, “The word is denied thee even in The minister is the least careful person there
your mouth and in your heart.” is on earth. He’s the least careful man among
That is the word of faith that we preach. I all nations on the earth. There are some that
 Rose H ill 27

will say, “I don’t want a preacher at my house,” people loose to do as they wish, it wouldn’t be a
and all that kind of stuff, when it’s a mighty fine safe place to live. So preaching is of great impor-
thing for a minister to come to your house. It’s tance.
a blessed thing when he come there in the right And singing is an important part of the wor-
spirit. It’s a blessed thing for him to come there. ship. We get glory out of singing, and we sing to
I remember a lady once, she didn’t have the glory of God. It feel good sometimes, sing-
no bread, no meal, nothing, and her son was ing. Just like, “I love the Lord, He heard my cry.”
getting ready to eat the last cake and die. A That means the individual loves the Lord
preacher by the name of Elijah came along. He because He returned them favors. He answered
asked the lady for a little morsel of bread, and their prayers that have been going up before
she told him, “I’m just picking up two sticks to Him. “I love the Lord, He heard my cry.”
cook this. This is all we have to subsist upon. We He pitied every groan. He had compassion
gonna eat this, and then we gonna die.” on my groans. After He pitied my groan, as long
What he said to her was, “Fix me a little feast as I live, while trouble rises, I will be in a hurry
first.” to get to His throne. I’ll try to make it there
So she did it. She obeyed God’s man and went and do everything I can for the humanity, that
on and fixed him a little cake. And when she I might obtain a crown of life. All this striving
went back in the kitchen, her meal there was that we are doing, and all the singing, and all
running over. Oh, it was running out the door. the good lives that we are living, the crown is the
God had opened up the windows of heaven and one thing that is promised to the Christian that
poured a blessing on her for taking care of His overcomes. In our Bible, He says, “It hasn’t been
preacher. It’s a fine thing to take care of God’s told, nor has it been revealed what the Lord
ambassador, because he’s the only man that God have in store for those who overcome you.”
is depending on to bring the word home. The only thing that we know about is a crown
If it wasn’t for the preacher, all our faith and of life, but there is many other things that our
all our hopes and all our running will be in vain. ears haven’t heard. Now it hasn’t been revealed
See, preaching is a spoken communication to nor has it been told what the Lord have in store
sway folks to come to the Lord, to sway Chris- for us. It’s like a song where Paul prayed to the
tian people to do the right thing. Two-thirds of Lord, and the Lord answered his prayer im-
the world is civilized under the preaching of the mediately. “What did I do? What did I say when
gospel. It makes many people do the right thing. the jailer cried out what must I do to be saved?”
If you just turn all these people loose and throw The Lord said, “Lean on the Lord Jesus, and
the preaching away, this wouldn’t be a safe place thy shalt be saved.”
to live, which it ain’t too much of a safe place The song doesn’t mean that he just actually
now. But it wouldn’t be safe at all then. If the heard God’s voice, but that God reduced His
preacher would quit preaching and turn the voice to the preaching of the Gospels. You see,
28 Blues Roots

when God talks, trees move about. Mountains Then it says, “Lay down your weary worn
skip like lambs when God speaks. It makes man head where I put my head, on Jesus.”
tremble when God speaks. Therefore, He had to I don’t think blues should be in a church or
reduce His voice through preaching of the word. nowhere else. But that is a part of the world.
And when you hear the preaching of God’s Christ told the church that “ye are part in the
word, then you heard God’s voice. You heard world but not of the world.”
God’s voice. I don’t think the church should take part in
That’s the way He talks. He talks today no devil work, and the blues and all that stuff
through man because if God had to talk Him- ain’t nothing but the devil’s work. I don’t think
self, we couldn’t stand it. The earth would move it should mix with God’s work.
at the sound of His voice. One day He talked on I read a story once about a parrot—you know
Mt. Sinai, and lightning started to do skip jacks one of those talking birds—that was in a church.
on the bosom of the clouds. Dark clouds started The church was next door to a juke house, and
to roll like sheets. Thunder began to beat like that bird would sit up there and talk and carry
drums, like a funeral march, and began to blow on with them. So eventually they thought they
around the sides of the mountain. People call for would move the church and carry it on down the
God to stop. They don’t want to hear no more. road about a mile away from that juke house.
See, God had to reduce His voice in order to get When the minister got out there for the last
it over to the people. And when I preach, “He service, the parrot was still there. The preacher
that believes and is baptized is saved.” came out there and said, “Parrot, we left your
That’s God’s voice then. Then the song says, “I place down at that juke house and come way up
heard the voice of Jesus saying, Come unto me here so we wouldn’t hear all that noise.”
and rest.” The parrot said, “Yes, but you have the same
That’s the preaching. The preaching is gang up here. The same gang that go to the juke
preaching that he that believes and is baptized house is going to the church.”
shall be saved. There shall be rest for the weary. That’s what he had reference to. So I think
When the minister is there, that’s God’s voice, the church people should draw themselves out
and the church cries out, “I heard the voice of from the world and be separated from the world
Jesus saying, Come unto me and rest.” of people.
 29

lake mary
Martha and Scott Dunbar lived on the bank of Lake Mary, an oxbow lake
twenty miles west of Woodville in Wilkinson County. The lake formed when
the Mississippi River changed its course, and the abandoned riverbed be-
came a lake. Lake Mary is famed for its fishing, and Scott Dunbar worked
most of his life as a fishing guide and as a musician who performed at parties
in the area.
Dunbar was a songster who composed and sang a wide range of blues.
One of his most unusual songs is a cante-fable—a sung story—about a
young man who courts his sweetheart. He brings corn whiskey to her par-
ents to make them fall asleep, and then he courts their daughter through the
night.
Dunbar was also a gifted storyteller whose tales vividly describe the worlds
of black religion, white fishermen, and the military at Camp Shelby, Missis-
sippi. He used his wit to survive in these worlds, and his stories are filled
with both humor and pathos, as are those of his wife, Martha Dunbar.
These interviews were recorded during the summer of 1968 at the Dun-
bars’ home.
 31

martha dunbar

My mother’s name was Martha Patrick, from I was fifty and Scott was thirty-seven when
birth until she died. She never married. And we got married. Scott would go around here
my mother and grandmother raised Sister and saying, “Old woman this and old woman that.”
I by theyself. When we got grown, we had no- I would say, “Man, look in the mirror and see
body to plow. You know people had to farm in your gray head, please.”
those days. My sister went to New Orleans, and I know Scott’s sixty-five. But you know Scott
I hitched up two mares and went to plowing. I can’t get his Social Security, and that’s shameful.
plowed four years and made my own crop. And the people that don’t deserve it, they get-
And Scott, when I met Scott, Scott was wag- ting it. People lie and get it, and he tell the truth
ging with two girls. He and his wife had sepa- and can’t get it. That’s the way it goes.
rated. He married my stepbrother’s daughter. Oh, I had hard times plowing, you know.
I wanted to take the children. I asked him to I have plowed all week and on Saturday rode
let me take the children and raise them, and he from Woodstock to Woodville to get my rations
wouldn’t. I said, “Well let them stay with me for the next week. I’d leave Saturday before
about two or three weeks or a month.” daybreak, get my rations, come back, feed my
He did. And when he came for them, they horse, catch another, and go plow till sundown
started crying and me too because I didn’t want on Saturday. I did that. I got witnesses—white
to give them up. I came down here and I stayed and black—to tell you that. I drove cattle up and
about one week with the children. I know my down the Gin Place hill there, and men wouldn’t
peoples and everybody else, they talked. I said, do that.
“What you gonner do? You won’t give me the I’m scared of a horse now. I look at a horse
children, and I ain’t gonner stay in no house and wonder what I was thinking about, getting
with no man I ain’t married to.” up on it. I wouldn’t dare get on one now. People
We went to Woodville on the eighteenth of living today will tell you I could ride, rope, and
September 1944 and was married. I didn’t love do everything. The boys was mean to me, you
Scott. I liked him, you know. Just liked him. I know. I was so mannish, they couldn’t do noth-
married him to be with those children. But I ing with me. When the boss man ordered them
couldn’t have got a better husband no kind of to fix fence or drive cattle, they’d make me go.
way. That’s the truth. He’s good and he been I didn’t give a kick. I’d get my horse and go fix
good all the way. I could of got a better-looking the fence. I oughta hate them for it, but I don’t
man and a better-educated man, and he’d of care. I’m glad I learned how to do stuff like that.
been beating me and throwed me in the river It made me independent. I don’t back down
cause I’m kind of fussy sometime. for nothing. The only thing stop me now is my

Martha Dunbar, Lake Mary, 1968

▲
32 Blues Roots

knees. I got along with them because they didn’t I had my cousin, Cap’n Jones. He was a big
dish out a bit more than I could. I never had a farmer, white man. I called him cousin. I caught
fight or nothing in my life. Never been in court- the mare and had her tied out and said, “I’m
house for nothing but to pay taxes and get mar- going to the store, Momma.”
ried. I had friends go to jail, and they would say, “What you going to the store for?”
“Come to see me.” “I’ll be back to reckon. Don’t matter.”
I told them I wouldn’t go in the jail unless I I caught Cap’n Jones. I said, “Cap’n Jones,
go for myself and I was trying to keep out. None Sister and Nettie getting dresses. I don’t have no
of my people never went to jail. And Scott, I money, and I want a silk dress too.”
don’t think he ever been. I had a good life cause He said, “Go in there and tell them to give
I didn’t mind working. And when I started you whatever money you need to get the dress.”
working, what you think I was getting a day? I went in there and got the dress. Momma
Thirty cents. When I got fifty cents, I was rich. say, “Where you been?”
I was hoeing and packing water to the hands. “I went to Cap’n Jones to get me some money
I remember one day Sister and Aunt Nettie was to get me a dress. I’ll work it out.”
gonner have something at the church, and I I could get anything I wanted. To get that
wanted to go. They went and got new dresses. I money, I’d go and pick cotton. I could pick
said, “Momma, how’s Sister getting a new dress two hundred pounds of cotton in a day. I have
like that?” worked, and I’m glad of it. I wish these young
She said, “Well your sister working.” people had to do what I did.
 33

scott dunbar

I worked for four bits a day back there. When I girls, but I couldn’t map that out right. I
got big enough to saw them old big trees down, couldn’t put it down straight. I ain’t never went
I got a dollar and a quarter a day. That’s all they to school, you see. That man come and looked at
give you, a dollar and a quarter a day. Then I the paper and say, “Boy, you ain’t done nothing.”
went to grafting them trees, sawing them limbs I said, “I told you I can’t write. Anything else
off to make them great big pecans. That was I’ll do it but write. I can’t write.”
my job. They was paying good money for that. “You putting on, boy. You fooling me.”
I started driving a tractor and bulldozing. I I say, “I shore ain’t, Cap’n.”
couldn’t stand all that noise and stuff, and I quit He say, “Look in this book.”
that job. I came here to Lake Mary and went to He got one of them big old books that gave
fishing for a living. records where you went to school, and he
A man from Gloucester come over here, and flipped that book, and he couldn’t find my
he wanted me to tend to a tent. I stayed over record.
here and tended to his tent. He told me, “You I say, “Flip it a little more, cause you ain’t
stay here every month, and every two weeks I’ll gonner find my record in there. Keep a’flipping
give you fifty dollars.” that book.”
I tended to his tent and paddled him out in That man kept flipping. “Boy, I believe you
the boat. He kept coming down here till he died. telling the truth.”
He died yonder in Crosby. That’s where he had I said, “I’m is. I ain’t went to school. Come on
a place. And I played the guitar for parties and down on Lake Mary. I’ll carry you to them old
things. Oh man, we had a time then. I was a folk, and you can ask them did they send me to
little old boy then. school.”
My momma and poppa didn’t never let me He says, “It’s a shame they didn’t let you go to
go to school. They made me work. All my sisters school. They done wrong with you.”
and brothers, they went to school. Now I know I say, “That’s what I know.”
more than them that went to school. He say, “Well come here. Let me show you
If I had went to school, oh Lord, no telling how to write.”
what I’d have been. But that’s all saved me out of He was gonner show me. His hand was going
the army. I couldn’t write. I went over to Camp like this and mine was shaking too, you see.
Shelby, and they carried me in that office and Both of us hands shaking, and he supposed to
put me at a little desk and said, “Now write what be still. And know one thing? Me and him both
you think of the army, Scott.” had the rubber part down and the lead part
All that was before my eyes was trees and sticking up. Gonner show me how to write. He
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moment. So if she is engaged in plucking a plant, or watching an
animal, she believes that the soul of this plant or animal has passed
into her. Among the things to which she will be particularly inclined
to attribute her condition are, in the first place, the things she has
just eaten. If she has recently eaten emu or yam, she will not doubt
that an emu or yam has been born in her and is developing. Under
these conditions, it is evident how the child, in his turn, will be
considered a sort of yam or emu, how he regards himself as a
relative of the plant or animal of the same species, how he has
sympathy and regard for them, how he refuses to eat them, etc.[594]
From this moment, totemism exists in its essential traits: it is the
native's theory of conception that gave rise to it, so Frazer calls this
primitive totemism conceptional.
It is from this original type that all the other forms of totemism are
derived. "When several women had, one after the other, felt the first
premonitions of maternity at the same spot and under the same
circumstances, the place would come to be regarded as haunted by
spirits of a peculiar sort; and so the whole country might in time be
dotted over with totem centres and distributed into totem districts."
[595] This is how the local totemism of the Arunta originated. In
order that the totems may subsequently be detached from their
territorial base, it is sufficient to think that the ancestral souls,
instead of remaining immutably fixed to a determined spot, are able
to move freely over the surface of the territory and that in their
voyages they follow the men and women of the same totem as
themselves. In this way, a woman may be impregnated by her own
totem or that of her husband, though residing in a different totemic
district. According to whether it is believed that it is the ancestor of
the husband or of the wife who thus follow the family about, seeking
occasions to reincarnate themselves, the totem of the child will be
that of his father or mother. In fact, it is in just this way that the
Guanji and Umbaia on the one hand, and the Urabunna on the other,
explain their systems of filiation.
But this theory, like that of Tylor, rests upon a begging of the
question. If he is to imagine that human souls are the souls of
animals or plants, one must believe beforehand that men take either
from the animal or vegetable world whatever is most essential in
them. Now this belief is one of those at the foundation of totemism.
To state it as something evident is therefore to take for granted that
which is to be explained.
Moreover, from this point of view, the religious character of the
totem is entirely inexplicable, for the vague belief in an obscure
kinship between the man and the animal is not enough to found a
cult. This confusion of distinct kingdoms could never result in
dividing the world into sacred and profane. It is true that, being
consistent with himself, Frazer refuses to admit that totemism is a
religion, under the pretext that he finds in it neither spiritual beings,
nor prayers, nor invocations, nor offerings, etc. According to him, it
is only a system of magic, by which he means a sort of crude and
erroneous science, a first effort to discover the laws of things.[596]
But we know how inexact this conception, both of magic and of
religion, is. We have a religion as soon as the sacred is distinguished
from the profane, and we have seen that totemism is a vast system
of sacred things. If we are to explain it, we must therefore show
how it happened that these things were stamped with this character.
[597] But he does not even raise this problem.

But this system is completely overthrown by the fact that the

postulate upon which it rests can no longer be sustained. The whole
argument of Frazer supposes that the local totemism of the Arunta is
the most primitive we know, and especially that it is clearly prior to
hereditary totemism, either in the paternal or the maternal line. Now
as soon as the facts contained in the first volume of Spencer and
Gillen were at our disposal, we were able to conjecture that there
had been a time in the history of the Arunta people when the
totems, instead of being attached to localities, were transmitted
hereditarily from mother to child.[598] This conjecture is definitely
proved by the new facts discovered by Strehlow,[599] which only
confirm the previous observations of Schulze.[600] In fact, both of
these authors tell us that even now, in addition to his local totem,
each Arunta has another which is completely independent of all
geographical conditions, and which belongs to him as a birthright: it
is his mother's. This second totem, just like the first, is considered a
powerful friend and protector by the natives, which looks after their
food, warns them of possible dangers, etc. They have the right of
taking part in its cult. When they are buried, the corpse is laid so
that the face is turned towards the region of the maternal totemic
centre. So after a fashion this centre is also that of the deceased. In
fact it is given the name tmara altjira, which is translated: camp of
the totem which is associated with me. So it is certain that among
the Arunta, hereditary totemism in the uterine line is not later than
local totemism, but, on the contrary, must have preceded it. For to-
day, the maternal totem has only an accessory and supplementary
rôle; it is a second totem, which explains how it was able to escape
observation as attentive and careful as that of Spencer and Gillen.
But in order that it should be able to retain this secondary place,
being employed along with the local totem, there must have been a
time when it held the primary place in the religious life. It is, in part,
a fallen totem, but one recalling an epoch when the totemic
organization of the Arunta was very different from what it is to-day.
So the whole superstructure of Frazer's system is undermined at its
foundation.[601]

IV

Although Andrew Lang has actively contested this theory of

Frazer's, the one he proposes himself in his later works,[602]
resembles it on more than one point. Like Frazer, he makes
totemism consist in the belief in a sort of consubstantiality of the
man and the animal. But he explains it differently.
He derives it entirely from the fact that the totem is a name. As
soon as human groups were founded,[603] each one felt the need of
distinguishing between the neighbouring groups with which it came
into contact and, with this end in view, it gave them different names.
The names were preferably chosen from the surrounding flora and
fauna because animals and plants can easily be designated by
movements or represented by drawings.[604] The more or less
precise resemblances which men may have with such and such
objects determined the way in which these collective denominations
were distributed among the groups.[605]
Now, it is a well-known fact that "to the early mind names, and
the things known by names, are in a mystic and transcendental
connection of rapport."[606] For example, the name of an individual
is not considered as a simple word or conventional sign, but as an
essential part of the individual himself. So if it were the name of an
animal, the man would have to believe that he himself had the most
characteristic attributes of this same animal. This theory would
become better and better accredited as the historic origins of these
denominations became more remote and were effaced from the
memory. Myths arose to make this strange ambiguity of human
nature more easily representable in the mind. To explain this, they
imagined that the animal was the ancestor of the men, or else that
the two were descended from a common ancestor. Thus came the
conception of bonds of kinship uniting each clan to the animal
species whose name it bore. With the origins of this fabulous kinship
once explained, it seems to our author that totemism no longer
contains a mystery.
But whence comes the religious character of the totemic beliefs
and practices? For the fact that a man considers himself an animal of
a certain species does not explain why he attributes marvellous
powers to this species, and especially why he renders a cult to the
images symbolizing it.—To this question Lang gives the same
response as Frazer: he denies that totemism is a religion. "I find in
Australia," he says, "no example of religious practices such as
praying to, nourishing or burying the totem."[607] It was only at a
later epoch, when it was already established, that totemism was
drawn into and surrounded by a system of conceptions properly
called religious. According to a remark of Howitt,[608] when the
natives undertake the explanation of the totemic institutions, they do
not attribute them to the totems themselves nor to a man, but to
some supernatural being such as Bunjil or Baiame. "Accepting this
evidence," says Lang, "one source of the 'religious' character of
totemism is at once revealed. The totemist obeys the decree of
Bunjil, or Baiame, as the Cretans obeyed the divine decrees given by
Zeus to Minos." Now according to Lang the idea of these great
divinities arose outside of the totemic system; so this is not a
religion in itself; it has merely been given a religious colouring by
contact with a genuine religion.
But these very myths contradict Lang's conception of totemism. If
the Australians had regarded totemism as something human and
profane, it would never have occurred to them to make a divine
institution out of it. If, on the other hand, they have felt the need of
connecting it with a divinity, it is because they have seen a sacred
character in it. So these mythological interpretations prove the
religious nature of totemism, but do not explain it.
 Moreover, Lang himself recognizes that this solution is not
sufficient. He realizes that totemic things are treated with a religious
respect;[609] that especially the blood of an animal, as well as that
of a man, is the object of numerous interdictions, or, as he says,
taboos which this comparatively late mythology cannot explain.[610]
Then where do they come from? Here are the words with which
Lang answers this question: "As soon as the animal-named groups
evolved the universally diffused beliefs about the wakan or mana, or
mystically sacred quality of the blood as the life, they would also
develop the various taboos."[611] The words wakan and mana, as we
shall see in the following chapter, involve the very idea of sacredness
itself; the one is taken from the language of the Sioux, the other
from that of the Melanesian peoples. To explain the sacred character
of totemic things by postulating this characteristic, is to answer the
question by the question. What we must find out is whence this idea
of wakan comes and how it comes to be applied to the totem and all
that is derived from it. As long as these two questions remain
unanswered, nothing is explained.

We have now passed in review all the principal explanations which

have been given for totemic beliefs,[612] leaving to each of them its
own individuality. But now that this examination is finished, we may
state one criticism which addresses itself to all these systems alike.
If we stick to the letter of the formulæ, it seems that these may
be arranged in two groups. Some (Frazer, Lang) deny the religious
character of totemism; in reality, that amounts to denying the facts.
Others recognize this, but think that they can explain it by deriving it
from an anterior religion out of which totemism developed. But as a
matter of fact, this distinction is only apparent: the first group is
contained within the second. Neither Frazer nor Lang have been able
to maintain their principle systematically and explain totemism as if
it were not a religion. By the very force of facts, they have been
compelled to slip ideas of a religious nature into their explanations.
We have just seen how Lang calls in the idea of sacredness, which is
the cardinal idea of all religion. Frazer, on his side, in each of the
theories which he has successively proposed, appeals openly to the
idea of souls or spirits; for according to him, totemism came from
the fact that men thought they could deposit their souls in safety in
some external object, or else that they attributed conception to a
sort of spiritual fecundation of which a spirit was the agent. Now a
soul, and still more, a spirit, are sacred things and the object of
rites; so the ideas expressing them are essentially religious and it is
therefore in vain that Frazer makes totemism a mere system of
magic, for he succeeds in explaining it only in the terms of another
religion.
We have already pointed out the insufficiencies of animism and
naturism; so one may not have recourse to them, as Tylor and
Jevons do, without exposing himself to these same objections. Yet
neither Frazer nor Lang seems to dream of the possibility of another
hypothesis.[613] On the other hand, we know that totemism is tightly
bound up with the most primitive social system which we know, and
in all probability, of which we can conceive. To suppose that it has
developed out of another religion, differing from it only in degree, is
to leave the data of observation and enter into the domain of
arbitrary and unverifiable conjectures. If we wish to remain in
harmony with the results we have already obtained, it is necessary
that while affirming the religious nature of totemism, we abstain
from deriving it from another different religion. There can be no
hope of assigning it non-religious ideas as its cause. But among the
representations entering into the conditions from which it results,
there may be some which directly suggest a religious nature of
themselves. These are the ones we must look for.
 CHAPTER VI

ORIGINS OF THESE BELIEFS—

continued

The Notion of the Totemic Principle,

or Mana, and the Idea of Force
Since individual totemism is later than the totemism of the clan,
and even seems to be derived from it, it is to this latter form that we
must turn first of all. But as the analysis which we have just made of
it has resolved it into a multiplicity of beliefs which may appear quite
heterogeneous, before going farther, we must seek to learn what
makes its unity.

We have seen that totemism places the figured representations of

the totem in the first rank of the things it considers sacred; next
come the animals or vegetables whose name the clan bears, and
finally the members of the clan. Since all these things are sacred in
the same way, though to different degrees, their religious character
can be due to none of the special attributes distinguishing them
from each other. If a certain species of animal or vegetable is the
object of a reverential fear, this is not because of its special
properties, for the human members of the clan enjoy this same
privilege, though to a slightly inferior degree, while the mere image
of this same plant or animal inspires an even more pronounced
respect. The similar sentiments inspired by these different sorts of
things in the mind of the believer, which give them their sacred
character, can evidently come only from some common principle
partaken of alike by the totemic emblems, the men of the clan and
the individuals of the species serving as totem. In reality, it is to this
common principle that the cult is addressed. In other words
totemism is the religion, not of such and such animals or men or
images, but of an anonymous and impersonal force, found in each of
these beings but not to be confounded with any of them. No one
possesses it entirely and all participate in it. It is so completely
independent of the particular subjects in whom it incarnates itself,
that it precedes them and survives them. Individuals die,
generations pass and are replaced by others; but this force always
remains actual, living and the same. It animates the generations of
to-day as it animated those of yesterday and as it will animate those
of to-morrow. Taking the words in a large sense, we may say that it
is the god adored by each totemic cult. Yet it is an impersonal god,
without name or history, immanent in the world and diffused in an
innumerable multitude of things.
But even now we have only an imperfect idea of the real ubiquity
of this quasi-divine entity. It is not merely found in the whole totemic
species, the whole clan and all the objects symbolizing the totem:
the circle of its action extends beyond that. In fact, we have seen
that in addition to the eminently holy things, all those attributed to
the clan as dependencies of the principal totem have this same
character to a certain degree. They also have something religious
about them, for some are protected by interdictions, while others
have determined functions in the ceremonies of the cult. Their
religiousness does not differ in kind from that of the totem under
which they are classified; it must therefore be derived from the same
source. So it is because the totemic god—to use again the
metaphorical expression which we have just employed—is in them,
just as it is in the species serving as totem and in the men of the
clan. We may see how much it differs from the beings in which it
resides from the fact that it is the soul of so many different beings.
But the Australian does not represent this impersonal force in an
abstract form. Under the influence of causes which we must seek,
he has been led to conceive it under the form of an animal or
vegetable species, or, in a word, of a visible object This is what the
totem really consists in: it is only the material form under which the
imagination represents this immaterial substance, this energy
diffused through all sorts of heterogeneous things, which alone is
the real object of the cult. We are now in a better condition for
understanding what the native means when he says that the men of
the Crow phratry, for example, are crows. He does not exactly mean
to say that they are crows in the vulgar and empiric sense of the
term, but that the same principle is found in all of them, which is
their most essential characteristic, which they have in common with
the animals of the same name and which is thought of under the
external form of a crow. Thus the universe, as totemism conceives it,
is filled and animated by a certain number of forces which the
imagination represents in forms taken, with only a few exceptions,
from the animal or vegetable kingdoms: there are as many of them
as there are clans in the tribe, and each of them is also found in
certain categories of things, of which it is the essence and vital
principle.
When we say that these principles are forces, we do not take the
word in a metaphorical sense; they act just like veritable forces. In
one sense, they are even material forces which mechanically
engender physical effects. Does an individual come in contact with
them without having taken proper precautions? He receives a shock
which might be compared to the effect of an electric discharge.
Sometimes they seem to conceive of these as a sort of fluid
escaping by points.[614] If they are introduced into an organism not
made to receive them, they produce sickness and death by a wholly
automatic action.[615] Outside of men, they play the rôle of vital
principle; it is by acting on them, we shall see,[616] that the
reproduction of the species is assured. It is upon them that the
universal life reposes.
But in addition to this physical aspect, they also have a moral
character. When someone asks a native why he observes his rites,
he replies that his ancestors always have observed them, and he
ought to follow their example.[617] So if he acts in a certain way
towards the totemic beings, it is not only because the forces resident
in them are physically redoubtable, but because he feels himself
morally obliged to act thus; he has the feeling that he is obeying an
imperative, that he is fulfilling a duty. For these sacred beings, he
has not merely fear, but also respect. Moreover, the totem is the
source of the moral life of the clan. All the beings partaking of the
same totemic principle consider that owing to this very fact, they are
morally bound to one another; they have definite duties of
assistance, vendetta, etc., towards each other; and it is these duties
which constitute kinship. So while the totemic principle is a totemic
force, it is also a moral power; so we shall see how it easily
transforms itself into a divinity properly so-called.
Moreover, there is nothing here which is special to totemism. Even
in the most advanced religions, there is scarcely a god who has not
kept something of this ambiguity and whose functions are not at
once cosmic and moral. At the same time that it is a spiritual
discipline, every religion is also a means enabling men to face the
world with greater confidence. Even for the Christian, is not God the
Father the guardian of the physical order as well as the legislator
and the judge of human conduct?

II

Perhaps someone will ask whether, in interpreting totemism thus,

we do not endow the native with ideas surpassing the limits of his
intellect. Of course we are not prepared to affirm that he represents
these forces with the relative clarity which we have been able to give
to them in our analysis. We are able to show quite clearly that this
notion is implied by the whole system of beliefs which it dominates;
but we are unable to say how far it is conscious and how far, on the
contrary, it is only implicit and confusedly felt. There is no way of
determining just what degree of clarity an idea like this may have in
obscure minds. But it is well shown, in any case, that this in no way
surpasses the capacities of the primitive mind, and on the contrary,
the results at which we have just arrived are confirmed by the fact
that either in the societies closely related to these Australian tribes,
or even in these tribes themselves, we find, in an explicit form,
conceptions which differ from the preceding only by shades and
degrees.
The native religions of Samoa have certainly passed the totemic
phase. Real gods are found there, who have their own names, and,
to a certain degree, their own personal physiognomy. Yet the traces
of totemism are hardly contestable. In fact, each god is attached to
a group, either local or domestic, just as the totem is to its clan.[618]
Then, each of these gods is thought of as immanent in a special
species of animal. But this does not mean that he resides in one
subject in particular: he is immanent in all at once; he is diffused in
the species as a whole. When an animal dies, the men of the group
who venerate it weep for it and render pious duties to it, because a
god inhabits it; but the god is not dead. He is eternal, like the
species. He is not even confused with the present generation; he
has already been the soul of the preceding one, as he will be the
soul of the one which is to follow.[619] So he has all the
characteristics of the totemic principle. He is the totemic principle,
re-clothed in a slightly personal form by the imagination. But still, we
must not exaggerate a personality which is hardly reconcilable with
this diffusion and ubiquity. If its contours were clearly defined, it
could never spread out thus and enter into such a multitude of
things.
However, it is incontestable that in this case the idea of an
impersonal religious force is beginning to change; but there are
other cases where it is affirmed in all its abstract purity and even
reaches a higher degree of generality than in Australia. If the
different totemic principles to which the various clans of a single
tribe address themselves are distinct from each other, they are, none
the less, comparable to each other at bottom; for all play the same
rôle in their respective spheres. There are societies which have had
the feeling of this unity with nature and have consequently advanced
to the idea of a unique religious force of which all other sacred
principles are only expressions and which makes the unity of the
universe. As these societies are still thoroughly impregnated with
totemism, and as they remain entangled in a social organization
identical with that of the Australians, we may say that totemism
contained this idea in potentiality.
This can be observed in a large number of American tribes,
especially those belonging to the great Sioux family: the Omaha,
Ponka, Kansas, Osage, Assiniboin, Dakota, Iowa, Winnebago,
Mandan, Hidatsa, etc. Many of these are still organized in clans, as
the Omaha[620] and the Iowa;[621] others were so not long since,
and, says Dorsey, it is still possible to find among them "all the
foundations of the totemic system, just as in the other societies of
the Sioux."[622] Now among these peoples, above all the particular
deities to whom men render a cult, there is a pre-eminent power to
which all the others have the relation of derived forms, and which is
called wakan.[623] Owing to the preponderating place thus assigned
to this principle in the Siouan pantheon, it is sometimes regarded as
a sort of sovereign god, or a Jupiter or Jahveh, and travellers have
frequently translated wakan by "great spirit." This is misrepresenting
its real nature gravely. The wakan is in no way a personal being; the
natives do not represent it in a determined form. According to an
observer cited by Dorsey, "they say that they have never seen the
wakanda, so they cannot pretend to personify it."[624] It is not even
possible to define it by determined attributes and characteristics. "No
word," says Riggs, "can explain the meaning of this term among the
Dakota. It embraces all mystery, all secret power, all divinity."[625] All
the beings which the Dakota reveres, "the earth, the four winds, the
sun, the moon and the stars, are manifestations of this mysterious
life and power" which enters into all. Sometimes it is represented in
the form of a wind, as a breath having its seat in the four cardinal
points and moving everything:[626] sometimes it is a voice heard in
the crashing of the thunder;[627] the sun, moon and stars are
wakan.[628] But no enumeration could exhaust this infinitely complex
idea. It is not a definite and definable power, the power of doing this
or that; it is Power in an absolute sense, with no epithet or
determination of any sort. The various divine powers are only
particular manifestations and personifications of it; each of them is
this power seen under one of its numerous aspects.[629] It is this
which made one observer say, "He is a protean god; he is supposed
to appear to different persons in different forms."[630] Nor are the
gods the only beings animated by it: it is the principle of all that lives
or acts or moves. "All life is wakan. So also is everything which
exhibits power, whether in action, as the winds and drifting clouds,
or in passive endurance, as the boulder by the wayside."[631]
Among the Iroquois, whose social organization has an even more
pronouncedly totemic character, this, same idea is found again; the
word orenda which expresses it is the exact equivalent of the wakan
of the Sioux. "The savage man," says Hewitt, "conceived the diverse
bodies collectively constituting his environment to possess inherently
mystic potence ... (whether they be) the rocks, the waters, the tides,
the plants and the trees, the animals and man, the wind and the
storms, the clouds and the thunders and the lightnings,"[632] etc.
"This potence is held to be the property of all things ... and by the
inchoate mentation of man is regarded as the efficient cause of all
phenomena, all the activities of his environment."[633] A sorcerer or
shaman has orenda, but as much would be said of a man
succeeding in his enterprises. At bottom, there is nothing in the
world which does not have its quota of orenda; but the quantities
vary. There are some beings, either men or things, which are
favoured; there are others which are relatively disinherited, and the
universal life consists in the struggles of these orenda of unequal
intensity. The more intense conquer the weaker. Is one man more
successful than his companions in the hunt or at war? It is because
he has more orenda. If an animal escapes from a hunter who is
pursuing it, it is because the orenda of the former was the more
powerful.
This same idea is found among the Shoshone under the name of
pokunt, among the Algonquin under the name of manitou,[634] of
nauala among the Kwakiutl,[635] of yek among the Tlinkit[636] and of
sgâna among the Haida.[637] But it is not peculiar to the Indians of
North America; it is in Melanesia that it was studied for the first
time. It is true that in certain of the islands of Melanesia, social
organization is no longer on a totemic basis; but in all, totemism is
still visible,[638] in spite of what Codrington has said about it. Now
among these peoples, we find, under the name of mana, an idea
which is the exact equivalent of the wakan of the Sioux and the
orenda of the Iroquois. The definition given by Codrington is as
follows: "There is a belief in a force altogether distinct from physical
power, which acts in all ways for good and evil; and which it is of the
greatest advantage to possess or control. This is Mana. I think I
know what our people mean by it.
... It is a power or influence, not physical and in a way
supernatural;
but it shows itself in physical force, or in any kind of power or
excellence which a man possesses. This mana is not fixed in
anything, and can be conveyed in almost anything.
... All Melanesian religion consists, in fact, in getting this
mana for one's self, or getting it used for one's benefit."[639] Is this
not the same notion of an anonymous and diffused force, the germs
of which we recently found in the totemism of Australia? Here is the
same impersonality; for, as Codrington says, we must be careful not
to regard it as a sort of supreme being; any such idea is "absolutely
foreign" to Melanesian thought. Here is the same ubiquity; the mana
is located nowhere definitely and it is everywhere. All forms of life
and all the effects of the action, either of men or of living beings or
of simple minerals, are attributed to its influence.[640]
Therefore there is no undue temerity in attributing to the
Australians an idea such as the one we have discovered in our
analysis of totemic beliefs, for we find it again, but abstracted and
generalized to a higher degree, at the basis of other religions whose
roots go back into a system like the Australian one and which visibly
bear the mark of this. The two conceptions are obviously related;
they differ only in degree, while the mana is diffused into the whole
universe, what we call the god or, to speak more precisely, the
totemic principle, is localized in the more limited circle of the beings
and things of certain species. It is mana, but a little more
specialized; yet as a matter of fact, this specialization is quite
relative.
Moreover, there is one case where this connection is made
especially apparent. Among the Omaha, there are totems of all
sorts, both individual and collective;[641] but both are only particular
forms of wakan. "The foundation of the Indian's faith in the efficacy
of the totem," says Miss Fletcher, "rested upon his belief concerning
nature and life. This conception was complex and involved two
prominent ideas: First, that all things, animate and inanimate, were
permeated by a common life; and second, that this life could not be
broken, but was continuous."[642] Now this common principle of life
is the wakan. The totem is the means by which an individual is put
into relations with this source of energy; if the totem has any
powers, it is because it incarnates the wakan. If a man who has
violated the interdictions protecting his totem is struck by sickness or
death, it is because this mysterious force against which he has thus
set himself, that is, the wakan, reacts against him with a force
proportionate to the shock received.[643] Also, just as the totem is
wakan, so the wakan, in its turn, sometimes shows its totemic origin
by the way in which it is conceived. In fact, Say says that among the
Dakota the "wahconda" is manifested sometimes in the form of a
grey bear, sometimes of a bison, a beaver or some other animal.
[644] Undoubtedly, this formula cannot be accepted without reserve.
The wakan repels all personification and consequently it is hardly
probable that it has ever been thought of in its abstract generality
with the aid of such definite symbols. But Say's remark is probably
applicable to the particular forms which it takes in specializing itself
in the concrete reality of life. Now if there is a possibility that there
was a time when these specializations of the wakan bore witness to
such an affinity for an animal form, that would be one more proof of
the close bonds uniting this conception to the totemic beliefs.[645]
It is possible to explain why this idea has been unable to reach the
same degree of abstraction in Australia as in the more advanced
societies. This is not merely due to the insufficient aptitude of the
Australian for abstracting and generalizing: before all, it is the nature
of the social environment which has imposed this particularism. In
fact, as long as totemism remains at the basis of the cultural
organization, the clan keeps an autonomy in the religious society
which, though not absolute, is always very marked. Of course we
can say that in one sense each totemic group is only a chapel of the
tribal Church; but it is a chapel enjoying a large independence. The
cult celebrated there, though not a self-sufficing whole, has only
external relations with the others; they interchange without
intermingling; the totem of the clan is fully sacred only for this clan.
Consequently the groups of things attributed to each clan, which are
a part of it in the same way the men are, have the same individuality
and autonomy. Each of them is represented as irreducible into
similar groups, as separated from them by a break of continuity, and
as constituting a distinct realm. Under these circumstances, it would
occur to no one that these heterogeneous worlds were different
manifestations of one and the same fundamental force; on the
contrary, one might suppose that each of them corresponded to an
organically different mana whose action could not extend beyond
the clan and the circle of things attributed to it. The idea of a single
and universal mana could be born only at the moment when the
tribal religion developed above that of the clans and absorbed them
more or less completely. It is along with the feeling of the tribal unity
that the feeling of the substantial unity of the world awakens. As we
shall presently show,[646] it is true that the Australian societies are
already acquainted with a cult that is common to the tribe as a
whole. But if this cult represents the highest form of the Australian
religions, it has not succeeded in touching and modifying the
principles upon which they repose: totemism is essentially a
federative religion which cannot go beyond a certain degree of
centralization without ceasing to be itself.
One characteristic fact clearly shows the fundamental reason
which has kept the idea of the mana so specialized in Australia. The
real religious forces, those thought of in the form of totems, are not
the only ones with which the Australian feels himself obliged to
reckon. There are also some over which magicians have particular
control. While the former are theoretically considered healthful and
beneficent, the second have it as their especial function to cause
sickness and death. And at the same time that they differ so greatly
in the nature of their effects, they are contrasted also by the
relations which they sustain with the social organization. A totem is
always a matter of the clan; but on the contrary, magic is a tribal
and even an intertribal institution. Magic forces do not belong to any
special portion of the tribe in particular. All that is needed to make
use of them is the possession of efficient recipes. Likewise,
everybody is liable to feel their effects and consequently should try
to protect himself against them. These are vague forces, specially
attached to no determined social division, and even able to spread
their action beyond the tribe. Now it is a remarkable fact that among
the Arunta and Loritja, they are conceived as simple aspects and
particular forms of a unique force, called in Arunta Arungquiltha or
Arúnkulta.[647] "This is a term," say Spencer and Gillen, "of
somewhat vague import, but always associated at bottom with the
possession of supernatural evil power.... The name is applied
indiscriminately to the evil influence or to the object in which it is,
for the time being, or permanently, resident."[648] "By arúnkulta,"
says Strehlow, "the native signifies a force which suddenly stops life
and brings death to all who come in contact with it."[649] This name
is given to the bones and pieces of wood from which evil-working
charms are derived, and also to poisonous animals and vegetables.
So it may accurately be called a harmful mana. Grey mentions an
absolutely identical notion among the tribes he observed.[650] Thus
among these different peoples, while the properly religious forces do
not succeed in avoiding a certain heterogeneity, magic forces are
thought of as being all of the same nature; the mind represents
them in their generic unity. This is because they rise above the social
organization and its divisions and subdivisions, and move in a
homogeneous and continuous space where they meet with nothing
to differentiate them. The others, on the contrary, being localized in
definite and distinct social forms, are diversified and particularized in
the image of the environment in which they are situated.
From this we can see how thoroughly the idea of an impersonal
religious force enters into the meaning and spirit of Australian
totemism, for it disengages itself with clarity as soon as no contrary
cause opposes it. It is true that the arungquiltha is purely a magic
force. But between religious forces and magic forces there is no
difference of kind:[651] sometimes they are even designated by the
same name: in Melanesia, the magicians and charms have mana just
like the agents and rites of the regular cult;[652] the word oranda is
employed in the same way by the Iroquois.[653] So we can
legitimately infer the nature of the one from that of the other.[654]

III

The results to which the above analysis has led us do not concern
the history of totemism only, but also the genesis of religious
thought in general.
Under the pretext that in early times men were dominated by their
senses and the representations of their senses, it has frequently
been held that they commenced by representing the divine in the
concrete form of definite and personal beings. The facts do not
confirm this presumption. We have just described a systematically
united scheme of religious beliefs which we have good reason to
regard as very primitive, yet we have met with no personalities of
this sort. The real totemic cult is addressed neither to certain
determined animals nor to certain vegetables nor even to an animal
or vegetable species, but to a vague power spread through these
things.[655] Even in the most advanced religions which have
developed out of totemism, such as those which we find among the
North American Indians, this idea, instead of being effaced, becomes
more conscious of itself; it is declared with a clarity it did not have
before, while at the same time, it attains a higher generality. It is
this which dominates the entire religious system.
 This is the original matter out of which have been constructed
those beings of every sort which the religions of all times have
consecrated and adored. The spirits, demons, genii and gods of
every sort are only the concrete forms taken by this energy, or
"potentiality," as Hewitt calls it,[656] in individualizing itself, in fixing
itself upon a certain determined object or point in space, or in
centring around an ideal and legendary being, though one conceived
as real by the popular imagination. A Dakota questioned by Miss
Fletcher expressed this essential consubstantiability of all sacred
things in language that is full of relief. "Every thing as it moves, now
and then, here and there, makes stops. The bird as it flies stops in
one place to make its nest, and in another to rest in its flight. A man
when he goes forth stops when he wills. So the god has stopped.
The sun, which is so bright and beautiful, is one place where he has
stopped. The trees, the animals, are where he has stopped, and the
Indian thinks of these places and sends his prayers to reach the
place where the god has stopped and to win help and a blessing."
[657] In other words, the wakan (for this is what he was talking
about) comes and goes through the world, and sacred things are the
points upon which it alights. Here we are, for once, just as far from
naturism as from animism. If the sun, the moon and the stars have
been adored, they have not owed this honour to their intrinsic
nature or their distinctive properties, but to the fact that they are
thought to participate in this force which alone is able to give things
a sacred character, and which is also found in a multitude of other
beings, even the smallest. If the souls of the dead have been the
object of rites, it is not because they are believed to be made out of
some fluid and impalpable substance, nor is it because they
resemble the shadow cast by a body or its reflection on a surface of
water. Lightness and fluidity are not enough to confer sanctity; they
have been invested with this dignity only in so far as they contained
within them something of this same force, the source of all
religiosity.
We are now in a better condition to understand why it has been
impossible to define religion by the idea of mythical personalities,
gods or spirits; it is because this way of representing religious things
is in no way inherent in their nature. What we find at the origin and
basis of religious thought are not determined and distinct objects
and beings possessing a sacred character of themselves; they are
indefinite powers, anonymous forces, more or less numerous in
different societies, and sometimes even reduced to a unity, and
whose impersonality is strictly comparable to that of the physical
forces whose manifestations the sciences of nature study. As for
particular sacred things, they are only individualized forms of this
essential principle. So it is not surprising that even in the religions
where there are avowed divinities, there are rites having an efficient
virtue in themselves, independently of all divine intervention. It is
because this force may be attached to words that are pronounced or
movements that are made just as well as to corporal substances; the
voice or the movements may serve as its vehicle, and it may produce
its effects through their intermediacy, without the aid of any god or
spirit. Even should it happen to concentrate itself especially in a rite,
this will become a creator of divinities from that very fact.[658] This
is why there is scarcely a divine personality who does not retain
some impersonality. Those who represent it most clearly in a
concrete and visible form, think of it, at the same time, as an
abstract power which cannot be defined except by its own efficacy,
or as a force spread out in space and which is contained, at least in
part, in each of its effects. It is the power of producing rain or wind,
crops or the light of day; Zeus is in each of the raindrops which falls,
just as Ceres is in each of the sheaves of the harvest.[659] As a
general rule, in fact, this efficacy is so imperfectly determined that
the believer is able to form only a very vague notion of it. Moreover,
it is this indecision which has made possible these syncretisms and
duplications in the course of which gods are broken up,
dismembered and confused in every way. Perhaps there is not a
single religion in which the original mana, whether unique or
multiform, has been resolved entirely into a clearly defined number
of beings who are distinct and separate from each other; each of
them always retains a touch of impersonality, as it were, which
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