United States or Pitcairn Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


The messenger was an animal regarded as sacred, akin to men and to gods, and therefore fitted to be an intermediary. Examples of such a method of approaching a deity are found among the Ainu, in Borneo, and among the North American Indians.

Prior to the Ainu was a Negrito race, whose connection with the former is a matter of much dispute, whose remains in the shape of pit-dwellings, stone arrow-heads, pottery, and other implements still exist, and will be found fully described by Mr. These little men are spoken of by the Ainu as Koro-puk-guru, i.e., according to Milne, men occupying excavations, or pit-dwellers.

This country, now inhabited by the Niphonians, or Japanese, as we have come to call them, was previously the home of the Ainu, a white, hairy under-sized race, possibly, even probably, emigrants from Europe, and now gradually dying out in Yezo and the Kurile Islands.

According to Chamberlain, the name means dwellers under burdocks, and is associated with the following legend. Before the time of the Ainu, Yezo was inhabited by a race of dwarfs, said by some to be two to three feet, by others only one inch in height.

This type is beyond doubt not Mongoloid, and may have been allied to the Ainu, a non-Mongol race still living in northern Japan. These, too, were a palaeolithic people, though some of their implements show technical advance. Later they disappear, probably because they were absorbed into various populations of central and northern Asia.

Surely these pit-dwellers were gods."* *"The Ainu and their Folk-lore," by Batchelor. Evidently if such legends are to be credited, the existence of fairies must no longer be denied in Europe.

Thus, although they kill a bear whenever they can, "in the process of dissecting the carcass they endeavor to conciliate the deity, whose representative they have slain, by making elaborate obeisances and deprecatory salutations"; "when a bear has been killed the Ainu sit down and admire it, make their salaams to it, worship it, and offer presents of inao"; "when a bear is trapped or wounded by an arrow, the hunters go through an apologetic or propitiatory ceremony."

"An Ainu?" I repeated. "Yes. Generally thought, now, to be a white race and nearer of kin to Europeans than Asiatics. The Japanese have pushed them northward and are now trying to civilize them. They are a dirty, hairy race, but when they are brought under civilizing influences they adapt themselves to their environment and make very good servants.

We should ask what a Hairy Ainu was, and how hairy he was, and above all what sort of Ainu he was. Would etiquette require us to ask him to bring his wife? And if we did ask him to bring his wife, how many wives would he bring? In short, as in the American formula, is he a polygamist? Merely as a point of housekeeping and accommodation the question is not irrelevant.

On the other hand, the modern Ainu, who are believed to represent the ancient population, include in their religious observances the worship of the first cakes made from the season's millet, and unless that rite be supposed to have been borrowed from the Yamato, it goes to indicate agricultural pursuits.