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Some Considerations On Navaho Witchcraft by Clyde Kluckhohn
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
In the character of witchcraft as a universal phenomenon of human beliefs, though also as a manifestation of behaviour and social institutions, there is something indistinguishable that for a long time has interested and intrigued many authors concerned with widely differing spheres (historians, sociologists, anthropologists, writers, poets, etc.). Already in the 16th and 17th centuries the new humanism, begun by the Middle Ages, was accompanied by a renewal of interest in “occult sciences,” “white” or “black,” and the positivism of the last century itself was transformed without eliminating the fascination for witchcraft indicated in the researches on satanism.
At one time a distinction was usually maintained between the words “Witch” (female) and “Wizard” male. Nowadays, however, and in the work under discussion, the term “Witch” sometimes connotes both sexes, and should be so interpreted in this essay. [Ed.].
1 C. Lévi-Strauss, La Pensée Sauvage, Paris, 1962, p. 292.
2 E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande, Oxford, 1937.
3 M. Mauss, Report by M. H. Kingsley, West African Studies (London, 1899), in L'Année sociologique, 3, 1900, pp. 224-226, particularly p. 225. The italics are mine.
4 M. Mauss, Report by D. Kidd, The Essential Kafir (London, 1904), in L'Année sociologique, 9, 1906, pp. 195-198, particularly pp. 196-197.
5 E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft…, cit. p. 387.
6 E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Theories of Primitive Religion, Oxford, 1965, p. 111.
7 C. Kluckhohn, Navaho Witchcraft, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Limited Edition, 1944. A recent second edition of this "classic" work (but unavailable) (Boston, 1967) has provided the text for this study.
8 C. Kluckhohn, Navaho Witchcraft, Boston, 1967, p. 65.
9 J. Middleton, Introduction to Magic, Witchcraft and Curing, published under the editorship of J. Middleton, Garden City, New York, 1967, p. 10.
10 By reason of the limitations of this paper I am not going to talk of the appendices, that is to say, of the documentation itself, of which Part I is only a resumé. I will try to show that this resumé, in which the Navaho ideas are faithfully respected, seems to require a different type of analysis to that presented in Part II.
11 C. Kluckhohn, Navaho Witchcraft, cit., p. 5. However, even this definition poses a problem, as will be seen later, because the "supernatural techniques" of witchcraft are the same as those used in white magic.
12 In the introduction to his book Kluckhohn says that he will not deal with "the bad side" of Navaho magic, and that he will not speak at all of the rôle of witchcraft in mythology. (C. Kluckhohn, op. cit., pp. 6-8). The fact that this limitation has been deliberate does not make it any less regrettable, because in eliminating essential differences the value of the scientific study is diminished.
13 V. W. Turner, "Witchcraft and Sorcery: Taxonomy versus Dynamics," Africa, vol. 34, pp. 314-325, 1964, Especially p. 323. This article is a study on Witchcraft and Sorcery in East Africa, published under the editorship of J. Middleton and E. H. Winter, London, 1963. For a more general development of the position of Turner see the admirable study by Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger, London, 1966, pp. 160 ff. and passim. In this same work Mary Douglas has shown that if the distinction, explicitly made by many African peoples, between voluntary and involuntary witchcraft (respectively sorcery and witchcraft, according to the terminology instituted by Evans-Pritchard) must not be ignored, it is also true that her interpretation in terms of comparative analysis is only possible if one renounces an absolute value, but if one considers it in relation to other varying social orders, such as the distribution of authority and of political power in each society.
14 C. Kluckhohn, "Conceptions of Death among the Southwestern Indians," (Conférence Ingersoll sur l'immortalité de l'homme, for the University Year 1947-1948), Harvard, 1948, brochure, p. 9.
15 On the rôle of the confession in a witchcraft trial see C. Lévi-Strauss, "Le sorcier et sa magie," in Anthropologie Structurale, ch. 9, pp. 183-203, pp. 189-196 specially. I was myself surprised to learn that among the Zinecantecos on the Chiapas high-plateau, México, that a known witch, because he had confessed his ill deeds, was allowed freedom in a village, and was treated with the respect due to faith-healers, and that others had been executed the previous years merely on suspicion of witchcraft. This witch was evidently "classé," one didn't believe in him very much, and laughed at his pretentions to "wickedness."
16 C. Kluckhohn, "Conceptions of Death," cit., p. 9.
17 C. Kluckhohn, ibid., p. 11.
18 C. Kluckhohn, ibid., pp. 11-12. See also M. E. Opler, "An Interpretation of Ambivalence in two American Indian Tribes," Journal of Social Psychology, VII, No. 1, 1935, pp. 82-115.
19 Regarding the rôle of children in European withcraft, see, for example, Christina Hole, Witchcraft in England, London-New York, 1966, passim. The predominant part played by female witches need not be underlined; Sprenger, the great religious specialist in the detection of witches, wrote, about the end of the 15th century: " It is necessary to speak of the heresy of witches (female), not of wizards (male): the latter are of small account." See, among others, Jules Michelet, Satanism and Witchcraft, New York, 1939, pp. viii and passim.
20 C. Kluckhohn, Navaho Witchcraft, cit., p. 226, n. 7.
21 C. Kluckhohn, ibid., p. 51.
22 C. Kluckhohn, ibid., p. 60.
23 C. Lévi-Strauss, " La structure des mythes," in Anthropologie structurale, Paris, 1958, pp. 227-245, particularly p. 242.
24 "From an anthropological point of view… the main interest in a witchcraft situation turns on techniques of divination and the relationship between witch and bewitched." E. R. Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma, Boston, 1965, p. 180.
25 C. Kluckhohn, Navaho Witchcraft, cit., p. 47. This remark is confirmed by Gladys Reichard, in Navaho Religion, New York, 1950, vol. I, pp. 87-88.
26 C. Kluckhohn, Navaho Witchcraft, cit. pp. 59-60.
27 One must compare this diagram with that given by Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft…, cit., p. 423.
28 C. Kluckhohn, Navaho Witchcraft, cit. p. 26. Kluckhohn interprets this practise and belief as the expression of a repressed hostility among members of the same family; only seeking here to show that his documentation is perhaps from a different angle I am not going to analyse this theory.
29 C. Kluckhohn, ibid., p. 25.
30 C. Kluckhohn, ibid., p. 27.
31 C. Kluckhohn, ibid., p. 25.
32 I borrow this phrase from Lévi-Strauss, "The Future of Kinship Studies," The Huxley Memorial Lecture, 1965, in the Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute, pp. 383-390, particularly p. 384.
33 C. Kluckhohn, "Navaho Morals," in Encyclopedia of Morals, published under the editorship of V. Ferm, New York, 1956, pp. 383-390, particularly p. 384.
34 C. Kluckhohn, ibid., p. 389.
35 C. Kluckhohn, Navaho Witchcraft, cit., p. 61.
36 I hope the specialist will forgive me for the general nature and imprecision of this association.
37 On this point I suggest a comparison with the examples and interpretations of Lévi-Strauss in the chapter already quoted (see note 15) of his Anthropologie structurale with the witchcraft trial with Sprenger as the judge, related by Mchelet in Satanism and Witchcraft, cit., p. 138 which could be interpreted in exactly the same way.
38 C. Kluckhohn, Navaho Witchcraft, cit., p. 124.
39 It was only after this study was already finished that I discovered a remarkable essay by Père Haile—who was a missionary among the Navaho for many years—on the beliefs of the Navaho relating to the spirit. Kluckhohn apparently did not know of this text when he wrote his book, and the fact that his observations coincide exactly with those of Père Haile in very many cases (and never disagree with them), constitutes not only an exception in the history of anthropology, but also another proof, if such were needed, of the extraordinary ethnographical qualities of the American anthropologist. The mis sionary's observations also confirm through the explicit testimony of native authorities and linguistic data, certain hypotheses that I had formulated on the base of information supplied by Kluckhohn: that encouraged me to published this study which had originally been conceived as a simple analytical exercise. A discussion here of these "connections" would take us too far, I return, therefore to the perusal of Haile: B. Haile, O.F.M., "Soul Concepts of the Navaho," Annali Lateranensi, vol. VII, 1943, pp. 59-94.
40 C. Kluckhohn, Navaho Witchcraft, cit., p. 65.
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