idea, that of the human soul, so that they may well shade imperceptibly into one another. To depend on some typical descriptions of fetishism and its allied doctrines in different grades of culture, is a safer mode of treatment than to attempt too accurate a general definition.
There is a quaint story, dating from the time of Columbus, which shows what mysterious personality and power rude tribes could attach to lifeless matter. The cacique Hatuey, it is related, heard by his spies in Hispaniola that the Spaniards were coming to Cuba. So he called his people together, and talked to them of the Spaniards — how they persecuted the natives of the islands, and how they did such things for the sake of a great lord whom they much desired and loved. Then, taking out a basket with gold in it, he said, 'Ye see here their lord whom they serve and go after; and, as ye have heard, they are coming hither to seek this lord. Therefore let us make him a feast, that when they come he may tell them not to do us harm.' So they danced and sang from night to morning before the gold-basket, and then the cacique told them not to keep the Christian's lord anywhere, for if they kept him in their very bowels they would have to bring him out; so he bade them cast him to the bottom of the river, and this they did.[1] If this story be thought too good to be true, at any rate it does not exaggerate authentic savage ideas. The 'maraca' or ceremonial rattle, used by certain rude Brazilian tribes, was an eminent fetish. It was a calabash with a handle and a hole for a mouth, and stones inside; yet to its votaries it seemed no mere rattle, but the receptacle of a spirit that spoke from it when shaken; therefore the Indians set up their maracas, talked to them, set food and drink and burned incense before them, held annual feasts in their honour, and would even go to war with their neighbours to satisfy the rattle-spirits' demand for human victims.[2] Among the North American Indians, the fetish-theory seems involved in that
