The Blood Covenant: A Primitive Rite and its Bearings on Scripture. H. Clay Trumbull
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the process of steady and silent examination from nearly two thousand pairs of eyes. Then, after Yumbila, the guide, had detailed in his own manner, who we were, and what was our mission up the great river; how we had built towns at many places, and made blood-brotherhood with the chiefs of great districts, such as Irebu, Ukuti, Usindi, Ngombé, Lukolela, Bolobo, Mswata, and Kintamo, he urged upon them the pleasure it would be to me to make a like compact, sealed with blood, with the great chiefs of populous Iboko. He pictured the benefits likely to accrue to Iboko, and Mata Bwyki in particular, if a bond of brotherhood was made between two chiefs like Mata Bwyki and Tandelay, [Stanley,] or as he was known, Bula Matari.”
There was no prompt response to Stanley’s request for strong friendship with the Bangala. There were prejudices to be removed, and old memories to be overborne; and Yumbila’s eloquence and tact were put to their severest test, in the endeavor to bring about a state of feeling that would make the covenant of blood a possibility here. But the triumph was won. “A forked palm branch was brought,” says Stanley. “Kokoro, the heir [of Mata Bwyki], came forward, seized it, and kneeled before me; as, drawing out his short falchion, he cried, ‘Hold the other branch, Bula Matari!’ I obeyed him, and lifting his hand he cleaved the branch in two. ‘Thus,’ he said, ‘I declare my wish to be your brother.’
“Then a fetish-man came forward with his lancets, long pod, pinch of salt, and fresh green banana leaf. He held the staff of Kokoro’s sword-bladed spear, while one of my rifles was brought from the steamer. The shaft of the spear and the stock of the rifle were then scraped on the leaf, a pinch of salt was dropped on the wood, and finally a little dust from the long pod was scraped on the curious mixture. Then, our arms were crossed—the white arm over the brown arm—and an incision was made in each; and over the blood was dropped a few grains of the dusty compound; and the white arm was rubbed over the brown arm [in the intermingling of blood].”
“Now Mata Bwyki lifted his mighty form, and with his long giant’s staff drove back the compressed crowd, clearing a wide circle, and then roaring out in his most magnificent style, leonine in its lung-force, kingly in its effect: ‘People of Iboko! You by the river side, and you of inland. Men of the Bangala, listen to the words of Mata Bwyki. You see Tandelay before you. His other name is Bula Matari. He is the man with the many canoes, and has brought back strange smoke-boats. He has come to see Mata Bwyki. He has asked Mata Bwyki to be his friend. Mata Bwyki has taken him by the hand, and has become his blood-brother. Tandelay belongs to Iboko now. He has become this day one of the Bangala. O, Iboko! listen to the voice of Mata Bwyki.’ (I thought they must have been incurably deaf, not to have heard that voice). ‘Bula Matari and Mata Bwyki are one to-day. We have joined hands. Hurt not Bula Matari’s people; steal not from them; offend them not. Bring food and sell to him at a fair price, gently, kindly, and in peace; for he is my brother. Hear you, ye people of Iboko—you by the river side, and you of the interior?’
“ ‘We hear, Mata Bwyki!’ shouted the multitude.”[59] And the ceremony was ended.
A little later than this, Stanley, or Tandelay, or Bula Matari, as the natives called him, was at Bumba, and there again he exchanged blood in friendship. “Myombi, the chief,” he says, “was easily persuaded by Yumbila to make blood-brotherhood with me; and for the fiftieth time my poor arm was scarified, and my blood shed for the cause of civilization. Probably one thousand people of both sexes looked on the scene, wonderingly and strangely. A young branch of a palm was cut, twisted, and a knot tied at each end; the knots were dipped in wood ashes, and then seized and held by each of us, while the medicine-man practised his blood-letting art, and lanced us both, until Myombi winced with pain; after which the knotted branch was severed; and, in some incomprehensible manner, I had become united forever to my fiftieth brother; to whom I was under the obligation of defending [him] against all foes until death.”[60]
The blood of a fair proportion of all the first families of Equatorial Africa now courses in Stanley’s veins; and if ever there was an American citizen who could appropriate to himself preeminently the national motto, “E pluribus unum,” Stanley is the man.
The root-idea of this rite of blood-friendship seems to include the belief, that the blood is the life of a living being; not merely that the blood is essential to life, but that, in a peculiar sense, it is life; that it actually vivifies by its presence; and that by its passing from one organism to another it carries and imparts life. The inter-commingling of the blood of two organisms is, therefore, according to this view, equivalent to the inter-commingling of the lives, of the personalities, of the natures, thus brought together; so that there is, thereby and thenceforward, one life in the two bodies, a common life between the two friends: a thought which Aristotle recognizes in his citation of the ancient “proverb”: “One soul [in two bodies],”[61] a proverb which has not lost its currency in any of the centuries.
That the blood can retain its vivifying power whether passing into another by way of the lips or by way of the veins, is, on the face of it, no less plausible, than that the administering of stimulants, tonics, nutriments, nervines, or anæsthetics, hypodermically, may be equally potent, in certain cases, with the more common and normal method of seeking assimilation by the process of digestion. That the blood of the living has a peculiar vivifying force, in its transference from one organism to another, is one of the clearly proven re-disclosures of modern medical science; and this transference of blood has been made to advantage by way of the veins, of the stomach, of the intestines, of the tissue, and even of the lungs—through dry-spraying.[62]
4. TRACES OF THE RITE IN EUROPE.[63]
Different methods of observing this primitive rite of blood-covenanting are indicated in the legendary lore of the Norseland peoples; and these methods, in all their variety, give added proof of the ever underlying idea of an inter-commingling of lives through an inter-commingling of blood. Odin was the beneficent god of light and knowledge, the promoter of heroism, and the protector of sacred covenants, in the mythology of the North. Lôké, or Lok, on the other hand, was the discordant and corrupting divinity; symbolizing, in his personality, “sin, shrewdness, deceitfulness, treachery, malice,” and other phases of evil.[64] In the poetic myths of the Norseland, it is claimed that at the beginning Odin and Lôké were in close union instead of being at variance;[65] just as the Egyptian cosmogony made Osiris and Set in original accord, although in subsequent hostility;[66] and as the Zoroastrians claimed that Ormuzd and Ahriman were at one, before they were in conflict.[67] Odin and Lôké are, indeed, said to have been, at one time, in the close and sacred union of blood-friendship; having covenanted in that union by mingling their blood in a bowl, and drinking therefrom together.
The Elder Edda,[68] or the earliest collection of Scandinavian songs, makes reference to this confraternity of Odin and Lôké. At a banquet of the gods, Lôké, who had not been invited, found an entrance, and there reproached his fellow divinities for their hostility to him. Recalling the indissoluble tie of blood-friendship, he said:
“Father of Slaughter, [69] Odin, say,
Rememberest not the former day,
When ruddy in the goblet stood,
For mutual drink, our blended blood?
Rememberest not, thou then didst swear,
The festive banquet ne’er to share,
Unless thy brother Lok was there?”
In citing this illustration of the ancient rite, a modern historian of chivalry has said: “Among barbarous people [the barbarians of Europe] the fraternity of arms [the sacred brotherhood of heroes] was established by the horrid custom of the new brothers drinking each other’s blood; but if this practice was barbarous, nothing was farther from barbarism than the sentiment which inspired it.”[70]
Another of the methods by which the rite of blood-friendship was observed in the Norseland, was by causing the blood