133Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. by Maya DerenReview by: John LayardMan, Vol. 53 (Jun., 1953), pp. 91-92Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and IrelandStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2795001 .Accessed: 29/05/2012 23:51

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JUNE, 1953 Man Nos. 132, 133

trate beyond the beam which marks the distinction. Wedding ritual makes the bride and her maids sit on the women's side and the groom and his men on the men's; and in her own home the bride takes her food in the women's half behind a curtain, at least on important oc- casions, until the birth of her first child. The sacred corner has a special aperture made for exit of the soul at death, which takes place if possible in this holy place. An ear of a cereal may be placed in the sacred corner at harvest or on Christmas Eve. At the family meal table, usually in or near the sacred corner, the master of the house sits at the head with the other males on a benich against the wall and the females on a free bench opposite; the lady of the house may sit at the

end of the rectangular table opposite to her husband. The stove is the most important piece of furniture and its opening for fuel is typi- cally near the door. An autumn festival has some analogies with our west European All Souls Day. The earth house of some north Asiatics may be a variant of the conical tent. The house of wood is naturally rectangular. Its external door is said to face either south or east, as part of a sun cult; it backs against some shelter, where pos- sible, to avoid snowdrifts or high winds. This study, which spares no detail, is an interesting contribution to European ethnography and again and again, as one reads, analogies from among ourselves come into the mind. H. J. FLEURE

AMERICA Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods- of Haiti. By Maya Deren.

London (Thames & Hudson), I953. Pp. x, 350. Price ZI 5S. 133 This is one of the best books ever published in its parti- cular field. It is the first occasion I know of in which a

person of mainly white extraction has really experienced, and has been able to understand and to record, the inner meaning of a non- white system of religious beliefs and practices. I include practices, because Maya Deren has been not only an observer but also a participator, not merely in ritual, but, which is much more vital, in the personal experience resulting from that ritual, and of the inner forces that give rise to it and are supported by it. This is the Haitian religion of Voudoun, regarding which many erroneous concepts exist, but which is here described not from the outside as something to be feared, but from the inside as a dynamic force tending towards the integration of the personality.

It is a religion centring in and leading up to 'possession' by 'powers' which much is made of in the mythology, but which the study of mythology alone would not explain unless they had been personally experienced. She speaks of this as her 'ordeal,' which we may well believe it was, as all deep religious experience is, and hints that her capacity for it may have been due to her own element of Negro blood. In fact here is what may prove to be an advance guard of the much needed work of expressing what is called 'primitive' mentality and psychic experience in terms which we can under- stand, and which we have need of understanding if we are to com- prehend not only other cultures but also the deeper levels of our own psychic structure.

The work has many sides, to interest the anthropologist, the student of religious mysticism, and also the psychotherapist in his efforts to grapple with those layers of the psyche which, among us, are too often relegated either to the dustbin of misunderstood dreams, or else, when they take possession of an unfortunate who is unconscious of their meaning, to mental hospitals.

'Divine Horsemen' is the name given to these powers which are thus said to 'mount' a man or woman, as though he were a horse. They can be extremely various. No Haitian wants to be thus pos- sessed, and so possession is carefully controlled, in the sense that it is elevated into the central act in a religious drama in which all the major passions and characteristics of mankind are 'deified' by being included in a pantheon of 'gods'. These 'gods' are among the so- called 'archetypes' of the ancient world and of modern psychology, which Maya Deren fully recognizes; and in many respects they resemble the gods of Greece, which is due less to anything that could be loosely called 'culture contact' than to their universality as 'types' of human reaction to internal and external facts.

They represent not persons but psychic forces which remain un- conscious so long as they are not objectified. Possession by them can be disastrous if their powers are not canalized. Mythology, however, canalizes them, and they 'appear' to onlookers when, under ritually controlled circumstances, they 'possess' a man or woman and thus show themselves to others, though not to the possessed, who has no memory of what has happened when he comes to, but is himself purged by the inner experience that he has undergone, uncriticized by conscious attitudes, which leaves him nevertheless in a state of great lassitude. The result is a 'selfless' experience which informs the multitude and ptLrges the sufferer.

All these and many cognate matters are fully described with real understanding, in measured terms of observation as well as with

regard to their subjective effect. And the mythology includes not only the 'gods' but also a great number of concepts of for the most part unsuspected value to modern man as well as to the Haitian, such as those of the psychic 'mirror' and, as a special form of it, the psychic 'cross roads' which are all mirrors of one another and through the intersection of which, as through a 'gateway,' the powers come and go.

Maya Deren extends this concept of opposites in her own acknow- ledgement of indebtedness to two very different supporters, Gregory Bateson and Joseph Campbell who, for her, 'represent, in a sense, harmonious polarities' and, as such, largely inspired her work and helped to form her mind. She also, while sometimes criticizing them, expresses her indebtedness to Herskovits, Courlander, Maximilian, Simpson, Odette Rigaud (who contributes an appendix) and others who have worked in the same field and had already ploughed some of the ground from which she reaped. These had inspired her with the desire to extend her previous work as a cinemaphotographer by making 'motion pictures' of Haitian dance. In this, as she herself says, she 'failed,' since the dances, as she found, could not be studied in isolation, but the failure brought quite another kind of 'victory,' of which this book is a result.

It must not be supposed, however, that, in her interest in the Haitian religion of Voudoun as it now is, she has ignored the com- plex factors of culture contact that have brought it about and given it its strength. There are the elements of Spanish conquest and occu- pation which lasted from IIo, when the first slave shipment to Haiti took place, till I677 when the island came under French rule. For centuries the slave trade continued bringing African slaves from nine African empires and some 40 known African tribes, not to speak of the Caribbeans and natives from other parts of the Americas who were impounded too, or of the original Haitians. All these were constantly 'marooning' into the interior, where the new complex culture characterized by Voudoun, with an overlay of Catholicism, gradually evolved, until it gave the impetus to the final revolt in I 804 that made Haiti the second free colony in the Western Hemisphere, following the United States.

Of these various elements the greatest stress has so far been laid on the African, but the author makes out a good case for the two main strains of mythology and ritual, the more 'accepting' called Rada and the more 'dynamic' called Petro, having had their origins respectively in Africa and America (including primarily of course the West Indies), with the latter as the most actively potent so far as action was concerned. But there are elements that may have come from even further east than Africa.

This book, as will have been seen, could be reviewed from many angles. The chief criticism that can be levelled against it is at the same time a compliment. In a work so full of basic and important sym- bolism, the index is not full enough. Criticisms of psychiatric theory and practice in relation to 'possession,' while to a large extent justified, are not without sympathizers among those of more en- lightened opinion over here. And, while fully recognizing and indeed expounding with exceptional clarity and insight the concept of 'archetypes,' the author, in her concentration on the particular religion which she is describing, does not fully appreciate their universality.

These are, however, minor details. They do not invalidate the major contribution which she has made, which is, so far as I know, unique in literature dealing with the more 'primitive' type of

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Nos. 133-137 Man JuNE, I953

religion, namely a quite cogent description of what, to the par- ticipant, is its dynamic soul-making force, a force which shows itself not only in contemplation, but in action too.

JOHN LAYARD

The Four Ages of Tsurai: A Documentary History of the Indian Village on Trinidad Bay. By Robert F. Heizer

134 andJohn E. Mills. Berkeley andLos Angeles (U. of California Press) (U.K.Agents: C.U.P.), I952. Pp. x, 207. Price /Ji 8s.

The southernmost Yurok Indians of north-western California lived on the shores of Trinidad Bay. This group of Yurok who lived in the village of Tsurai is the subject matter of this book. Since the village was abandoned in I9I6, it should be mentioned that the material presented consists of the results of archoeological excava- tions and written accounts of early contacts with the village.

The authors divide the history of Tsurai between approximately i6oo and I9I6 into four periods: prehistory, discovery.and explora- tion, the fur trade, and the American invasion. The prehistoric data represent a summary in ten pages of the work of an archoeological exploration sponsored by the Department of Anthropology of the University of California in I949 and, as such, will probably be par- ticularly welcomed by specialized students of California archoeology. The remaining pages of the book are given over to a compilation of documents written by explorers, fur traders, gold-diggers, etc., who in the course of their various endeavours took occasion to comment on their experiences while in the vicinity of the inhabitants of Tsurai. Indeed, the variation in quality and relevance of the various accounts is extreme; DonJuan Perez is almost exclusively concerned with his ship's problems while in Trinidad Bay, which he reports in a day-by-day journal. The account of Baron Karl Von Loeffelholz, on the other hand, is a reasonably systematic report by an untrained observer.

It is difficult to see how the authors can justify the publication of material such as this between hard covers. They say that the docu- ments constitute a record of the culture and recent history of the group, and stand out primarily as eyewitness records of the decline and disappearance of a pre-Caucasian civilization. The documents themselves, however, on the basis of almost any contemporary standards, do not support this view of their usefulness. If any attempt

had been made to interpret the documentary material or to use it as a basis for describing the social history of Tsurai, a worthwhile metho- dological contribution to the exploitation of such material could have been made. ARTHUR J. VIDICH

American Nonsinging Games. By Paul G. Brewster. Norman (U. of Oklahoma Press), -I953. Pp. xxii, 2I8. Price $3.75

135 The games described are classified under such titles as guessing games and stick games. The States where

each is played are mentioned, and there is after each description a note on the games or its variants as played in other parts of the world. Many English works appear in the bibliography, but references to English games in the text are incomplete; 'hunt the slipper' is mentioned as a German but not as an English game, and skipping is not mentioned under that name. Many games are seasonal, but apart from one reference this aspect of them is ignored.

We are told that such games as 'Prison Base' are readily recog- nizable as survivals of ancient tribal warfare; they may be survivals of ritual contests, but in tribal warfare there are no rules.

The book is well written and produced, and is a useful con- tribution to the literature of the subject. RAGLAN

American Race Theorists: A Critique of Their Thoughts and Methods. By Byram Campbell. Boston (Chapman & Grimes),

136 I952. Pp. I59. Price $3.50 This book is an emotional outburst by an author who

dubs all dissentients from his thesis as 'equalitarians,' no doubt inclu- ding in that class the writers of the American Declaration of Indepen- dence. Professor Kroeber may smile over the attack upon him; he would no doubt emphasize our common humanity with Asians and Africans and would probably be ready to adapt a famous phrase about woman and man by urging that 'African is not undeveloped European but diverse.' One can imagine the author of the book visiting Britain with, let us say, Pytheas and despising the natives. Europeans are now clearly superior especially in the art of exhausting earth capital, Africans seem superior for life and work between the tropics. African weakness in political experience is being so rapidly removed that a wise man may hesitate to forecast the future.

H. J. FLEURE

ASIA Caravan: The Story of The Middle East. By Carleton S. Coon.

London (Cape) (U.S.A.: Holt), I952. Pp. viii, 376, 7 maps,

,137 i6 pp. illus. Price ki 8s. The author describes this book as a 'Caravan' because

it is a moving picture, in full colour, of a mode of life; because in the Middle East transport and traffic in its fine goods are con- spicuous; because its organization is typical; and because it is in caravans that pious folk approach holy places, of which the Middle East is one to many people. His object is to provide newcomers, and American businessmen especially, with a guide to this mode of life, in all its varieties, so different fundamentally from their own, so easily and fatally misunderstood.

It is about a century since Le Play's Ouvriers Europeens made the first modern attempt to interpret the interactions of 'Place, Work, Folk,' in selected examples; about 5o years since Demolin's brilliant essay Comment la Route cre'e le Type Social applied Le Play's method on a planetary scale; de Pr6ville's Societes Africaines followed soon after, for a sequence of contrasted regions from Algeria to Cape Colony. But there has been nothing in English on quite the same plan; and Dr. Coon's bibliography shows how rich is the modern store of materials and authorities.

His fundamental notion, is that in the Middle East society has a 'mosaic' texture, consisting not of races, or castes, or classes, but of independent communities, only forced into association, like the individuals of which they themselves consist, by the physical compulsion of regional forces of climate and topography. His competence in this matter is attested by his masterly revision of' Ripley's Races of Europe, and his own more recent handbook. His handling of the varied material is original, and his definition of his subject at first sight startling.

Some of his type instances of 'Middle East' societies are drawn from Morocco, Western Sahara and Tunis; others from the borders of Afghanistan; and his seafarers, though based on Koweit, traffic with Zanzibar and Indonesia. One of his great monarchies is that of Turkish Istanbul. But his regional analysis, and his conception of 'mosaic' society support his, selections. With his treatment of 'more peoples, the Turks and Mongols' in chapter 9 to complete his ethnographical survey and prepare for the discussion of 'differences inherited and acquired', he passes on to the survey of social types, correlated with climate and topography and the village, the camp in the desert, the pastoral highlands, and the larger communities, town, city, and kingdom of shah or sultan. The larger populations, and greater political powers, loom up as based on position, at water supplies, road junctions, or strategical centres; though the last are not quite explicitly demonstrated. Something more might have been done to coordinate the last three types-the ship, the caravan, and what is here called the 'land of insolence' outside the frontiers of the regional states.

On racial characters, Dr. Coon gives a very wide extension to the Mediterranean group of breeds, including Iranian, and on the other hand regards the broad-headed, flat-backed types of head as due to artificial deformation by cradle boards, not necessarily deliberate. It will be interesting to see whether these types disappear, as they should in that case, from the next generation of pillow- trained children.

One would like to have fuller discussion of the Jewish com- munities, and of the Copts and Ethiopian Christians; and something about the northern terminals of the trans-Saharan caravan routes, such as the remarkable suburban village of Hausa-speaking Negroes at Tripoli.

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