CHAPTER III: MUTILATIONS.

§ 357. Facility of exposition will be gained by approaching indirectly the facts and conclusions here to be set forth.

The ancient ceremony of infeftment in Scotland was completed thus:—“He [superior’s attorney] would stoop down, and, lifting a stone and a handful of earth, hand these over to the new vassal’s attorney, thereby conferring upon him ‘real, actual, and corporal’ possession of the fief.” Among a distant slightly-civilized people, a parallel usage occurs. On selling his cultivated plot, a Khond, having invoked the village deity to bear witness to the sale, “then delivers a handful of soil to the purchaser.” From cases where the transfer of lands for a consideration is thus expressed, we may pass to cases where lands are by a similar form surrendered to show political submission. When the Athenians applied for help against the Spartans, after the attack of Kleomenes, a confession of subordination was demanded in return for the protection asked; and the confession was made by sending earth and water. A like act has a like meaning in Fiji. “The soro with a basket of earth . . . is generally connected with war, and is presented by the weaker party, indicating the yielding up of their land to the conquerors.” And so is it in India. When some ten years ago, Tu-wen-hsin sent his “Panthay” mission to England, “they carried with them pieces of rock Edition: current; Page: [53] hewn from the four corners of the [Tali] mountain, as the most formal expression of his desire to become feudatory to the British Crown.”

This giving a part instead of giving the whole, where the whole cannot be mechanically handed over, will perhaps be instanced as a symbolic ceremony; though, even in the absence of any further interpretation, we may say that it approaches as nearly to actual transfer as the nature of the case permits. We are not, however, obliged to regard this ceremony as artificially devised. We may affiliate it upon a simpler ceremony which at once elucidates it, and is elucidated by it. I refer to surrendering a part of the body as implying surrender of the whole. In Fiji, tributaries approaching their masters were told by a messenger “that they must all cut off their tobe (locks of hair that are left like tails). . . They all docked their tails.” Still, it may be replied that this act, too, is a symbolic act—an act artificially devised rather than naturally derived. If we carry our inquiry a step back, however, we shall find a clue to its natural derivation.

First, let us remember the honour which accrues from accumulated trophies; so that, among the Shoshones for instance, “he who takes the most scalps gains the most glory.” Let us join with this Bancroft’s statement respecting the treatment of prisoners by the Chichimecs, that “often they were scalped while yet alive, and the bloody trophy placed upon the heads of their tormentors.” And then let us ask what happens if the scalped enemy survives. The captor preserves the scalp as an addition to his other trophies; the vanquished enemy becomes his slave; and he is shown to be a slave by the loss of his scalp. Here, then, are the beginnings of a custom that may become established when social conditions make it advantageous to keep conquered foes as servants instead of eating them. The conservative savage changes as little as possible. While the new practice of enslaving the captured Edition: current; Page: [54] arises, the old practice of cutting from their bodies such parts as serve for trophies continues; and the marks left become marks of subjugation. Gradually as the receipt of such marks comes to imply bondage, not only will those taken in war be marked, but also those born to them; until at length the bearing of the mark shows subordination in general.

That submission to mutilation may eventually grow into the sealing of an agreement to be bondsmen, is shown us by Hebrew history. “Then Nahash the Ammonite came up, and encamped against Jabesh-gilead: and all the men of Jabesh said unto Nahash, Make a covenant with us, and we will serve thee. And Nahash the Ammonite answered them, On this condition will I make a covenant with you, that I may thrust out all your right eyes.” They agreed to become subjects, and the mutilation (not in this case consented to, however) was to mark their subjection. And while mutilations thus serve, like the brands a farmer puts on his sheep, to show first private ownership and afterwards political ownership, they also serve as perpetual reminders of the ruler’s power: so keeping alive the dread that brings obedience. This fact we see in the statement that when the second Basil deprived fifteen thousand Bulgarian captives of sight, “the nation was awed by this terrible example.”

Just adding that the bearing of a mutilation, thus becoming the mark of a subject race, survives as a token of submission when the trophy-taking which originated it has disappeared; let us now note the different kinds of mutilations, and the ways in which they severally enter into the three forms of control—political, religious, and social.

§ 358. When the Araucanians on going to war send messengers summoning confederate tribes, these messengers carry certain arrows as their credentials; and, “if hostilities are actually commenced, the finger, or (as Alcedo will have Edition: current; Page: [55] it) the hand of a slain enemy, is joined to the arrows”—another instance, added to those already given, in which hands, or parts of them, are brought home to show victory.

We have proof that in some cases living vanquished men, made handless by this kind of trophy-taking, are brought back from battle. King Osymandyas reduced the revolted Bactrians; and as shown “on the second wall” of the monument to him “the prisoners are brought forward: they are without their hands and members.” But though a conquered enemy may have one of his hands taken as a trophy without much endangering his life, loss of a hand so greatly diminishes his value as a slave, that some other trophy is naturally preferred.

The like cannot, however, be said of a finger. That fingers are sometimes carried home as trophies we have just seen; and that conquered enemies, mutilated by loss of fingers, are sometimes allowed to live as slaves, the Bible yields proof. In Judges i. 6, 7, we read:—“Adoni-bezek [the Canaanite] fled; and they pursued after him, and caught him, and cut off his thumbs and his great toes. And Adoni-bezek said, Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table: as I have done, so God hath requited me.” Hence, then, the fact that fingers are, in various places, cut off and offered in propitiation of living rulers, in propitiation of dead rulers, and in propitiation of dead relatives. The sanguinary Fijians, extreme in their loyalty to cannibal despots, yield sundry illustrations. Describing the sequence of an alleged insult, Williams says:—“A messenger was . . . sent to the chief of the offender to demand an explanation, which was forthwith given, together with the fingers of four persons, to appease the angry chieftain.” On the occasion of a chief’s death, “orders were issued that one hundred fingers should be cut off; but only sixty were amputated, one woman losing her life in consequence.” Once more, a child’s hand “was covered with blood, which Edition: current; Page: [56] flowed from the stump where, shortly before, his little finger had been cut off, as a token of affection for his deceased father.” This propitiation of the dead by offering fingers, or parts of them, occurs elsewhere. When, among the Charruas, the head of the family died, “the daughters, widow, and married sisters were obliged to have, each one joint from the finger cut off; and this was repeated for every relation of the like character who died: the primary amputation being from the little finger.” By the Mandans, the usual mode of expressing grief on the death of a relation “was to lose two joints of the little fingers, or sometimes the other fingers.” A like custom was found among the Dacotahs and various other American tribes. Sacrificed in this way to the ghost of the dead relative, or the dead chief, to express that subjection which would have pacified him while alive, the amputated finger becomes, in other cases, a sacrifice to the expanded ghost or god. During his initiation the Mandan warrior, “holding up the little finger of his left hand to the Great Spirit, he expresses to Him, in a speech of a few words, his willingness to give it as a sacrifice; when he lays it on the dried buffalo skull, where the other chops it off near the hand with a blow of the hatchet.” And the natives of Tonga cut off a portion of the little finger as a sacrifice to the gods, for the recovery of a superior sick relative.

Originally expressing submission to powerful beings alive and dead, this mutilation in some cases becomes, apparently, a mark of domestic subordination. The Australians have a custom of cutting off the last joint of the little finger of females; and a Hottentot “widow, who marries a second time, must have the top joint of a finger cut off, and loses another joint for the third, and so on for each time that she enters into wedlock.”

As showing the way in which these propitiatory mutilations of the hands are made so as to interfere least with usefulness, it may be noted that habitually they begin with Edition: current; Page: [57] the last joint of the little finger, and affect the more important parts of the hand only if they recur. And where, by amputating the hand, there is repeated in full the original mutilation of slain enemies, it is where the usefulness of the subject persons not a consideration, but where the treatment of the external enemy is extended to the internal enemy—the criminal. The Hebrews made the loss of a hand a punishment for one kind of offence, as shown in Deuteronomy, xxv. 11, 12. In ancient Egypt, forgers and other falsifiers lost both hands. Of a Japanese political transgressor it is said—“His hands were ordered to be struck off, which in Japan is the very extremity of dishonour.” In mediæval Europe hands were cut off for various offences.

§ 359. Recent accounts from the East prove that some of the vanquished deprived of their noses by their conquerors, survive; and those who do so, remain identifiable thereafter as conquered men. Consequently, lack of a nose may become the mark of a slave; and in some cases it does this. Certain of the ancient Central Americans challenged neighbouring peoples when “they wanted slaves; if the other party did not accept of the challenge, they ravaged their country and cut off the noses of the slaves.” And, describing a war carried on during his captivity in Ashantee, Ramseyer says the Ashantees spared one prisoner, “whose head was shaved, nose and ears cut off, and himself made to carry the king’s drum.”

Along with loss of nose occurs, in the last case, loss of ears. This is similarly interpretable as having originated from trophy-taking, and having in some cases survived, if not as a mark of ordinary slavery, still, as a mark of that other slavery which is a punishment for crime. In ancient Mexico “he who told a lie to the particular prejudice of another had a part of his lip cut off, and sometimes his ears.” Among the Honduras people a thief had his goods Edition: current; Page: [58] confiscated, “and, if the theft was very great, they cut off his ears and hands.” A law of an adjacent people, the Miztecs, directed the “cutting off of an adulterer’s ears, nose, or lips;” and by some of the Zapotecas, “women convicted of adultery had their ears and noses cut off.”

But though absence of ears seems more generally to have marked a criminal than a vanquished enemy who had survived the taking of his ears as trophies, we may suspect that originally it was a trait of an enslaved captive; and that by mitigation, it gave rise to the method of marking a slave that was used by the Hebrews, and still continues in the East with a modified meaning. In Exodus xxi. 5, 6, we read that if, after his six years’ service, a purchased slave does not wish to be free, his master shall “bring him to the door, or unto the door-post, and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall serve him for ever.” Commenting on this ceremony Knobel says:—“In the modern East, the symbol of piercing the ears is mentioned as the mark of those who are dedicated. . . . It expresses the belonging to somebody.” And since where there grows up unqualified despotism, private slavery is joined with public slavery, and the accepted theory is that all subjects are the property of the ruler, we may suspect that there hence results in some cases the universality of this mutilation. “All the Burmese without exception have the custom of boring their ears. The day when the operation is performed is kept as a festival; for this custom holds, in their estimation, something of the rank that baptism has in ours.” As indirect evidence, I may add the curious fact that the Gond holds “his ears in his hands in token of submission.”

A related usage must be noted: the insertion of a ring in the nose. Commenting on this as exemplified by some women of Astrachan, Bell says—“I was told that it was the consequence of a religious dedication of these persons to the service of God.” Now read the following passage from Isaiah about Sennacherib:—“This is the word that Edition: current; Page: [59] the Lord hath spoken concerning him. . . I will put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips.” And then add the fact that in Assyrian sculptures are represented prisoners being led by cords attached to rings through their noses. Do we not see a kindred filiation—conquest, incidental marking of the captive, survival of the mark as distinguishing subject persons?

§ 360. Jaws can be taken only from those whose lives are taken. There are the teeth, however: some of these may be extracted as trophies without seriously decreasing the usefulness of the prisoner. Hence another form of mutilation.

We have seen that teeth of slain foes are worn in Ashantee and in South America. Now if teeth are taken as trophies from captives who are preserved as slaves, loss of them must become a mark of subjection. Of facts directly showing that a propitiatory ceremony hence arises I can name but one. Among mutilations undergone when a king or chief dies in the Sandwich Islands, Ellis names knocking out one of the front teeth: an alternative being cutting the ears. When we further read in Cook that the Sandwich Islanders knock out from one to four of the front teeth, showing that the whole population becomes marked by these repeated mutilations suffered to propitiate the ghosts of dead rulers—when we infer that in propitiation of a much-dreaded ruler deified after death, not only those who knew him may submit to this loss, but also their children subsequently born; we see how the practice, becoming established, may survive as a sacred custom when its meaning is lost. For concluding that the practice has this sacramental nature, there are the further reasons derived from the fixing of the age for the operation, and from the character of the operator. In New South Wales it is the Koradger men, or priests, who perform the ceremony; and of a semi-domesticated Australian, Haygarth writes that he Edition: current; Page: [60] said one day, “with a look of importance, that he must go away for a few days, as he had grown up to man’s estate, and ‘it was high time that he should have his teeth knocked out.’ ” Various African races, as the Batoka, the Dor, similarly lose two or more of their front teeth; and habitually the loss of them is an obligatory rite. But the best evidence is furnished by the ancient Peruvians. A tradition among certain of them was that the conqueror Huayna Ccapac, finding them disobedient, “made a law that they and their descendants should have three of their front teeth pulled out in each jaw.” Another tradition, naturally derivable from the last, was that this extraction of teeth by fathers from their children was a “service very acceptable to their gods.” And then, as happens with other mutilations of which the meaning has dropped out of memory, the improvement of the appearance was in some parts the assigned motive.

§ 361. As the transition from eating conquered enemies to making slaves of them, mitigates trophy-taking so as to avoid causing death; and as the tendency is to modify the injury inflicted so that it shall in the least degree diminish the slave’s usefulness; and as, with the rise of a class born in slavery, the mark which the slave bears, no longer showing that he was taken in war, does not imply a victory achieved by his owner; there eventually remains no reason for a mark which involves serious mutilation. Hence it is inferable that mutilations of the least injurious kinds will become the commonest. Such, at any rate, seems a reasonable explanation of the fact that cutting off of hair is the most prevalent mutilation.

Already we have seen the probable origin of the custom in Fiji, where tributaries had to sacrifice their locks on approaching their great chiefs; and there is evidence that a kindred sacrifice was demanded of old in Britain. In the Arthurian legends, which, unhistoric as they may be, yield Edition: current; Page: [61] good evidence respecting the manners of the times from which they descend, we read, “Then went Arthur to Caerleon; and thither came messengers from King Ryons, who said, ‘Eleven kings have done me homage, and with their beards I have trimmed a mantle. Send me now thy beard, for there lacks yet one to the finishing of my mantle.’ ”

Reasons exist for the belief that taking an enslaved captive’s hair, began with the smallest practicable divergence from taking the dead enemy’s scalp; for the part of the hair in some cases given in propitiation, and in other cases worn subject to a master’s ownership, answers in position to the scalp-lock. The tobe yielded up by the tributary Fijians was a kind of pigtail: the implication being that this could be demanded by, and therefore belonged to, the superior. Moreover, among the Kalmucks,

“When one pulls another by the pigtail, or actually tears it out, this is regarded as a punishable offence, because the pigtail is thought to belong to the chief, or to be a sign of subjection to him. If it is the short hair on the top of the head that has been subjected to such treatment, it does not constitute a punishable offence, because this is considered the man’s own hair and not that of the chief.”

And then I may add the statement of Williams, that the Tartar conquerors of China ordered the Chinese “to adopt the national Tartar mode of shaving the front of the head, and braiding the hair in a long queue, as a sign of submission.” Another fact presently to be given joins with these in suggesting that a vanquished man, not killed but kept as a slave, wore his scalp-lock on sufferance.

Be this as it may, however, the widely-prevalent custom of taking the hair of the conquered, either with or without part of the skin, has nearly everywhere resulted in the association between short hair and slavery. This association existed among both Greeks and Romans: “the slaves had their hair cut short as a mark of servitude.” We find it the same throughout America. “Socially the slave is despised, his hair is cut short,” says Bancroft of the Edition: current; Page: [62] Nootkas; and “the privilege of wearing long hair was rigorously denied” to Carib slaves and captives. The slavery that punished criminality was similarly marked. In Nicaragua, “a chief had his hair cut off and became a slave to the person that had been robbed till he was satisfied.” Naturally, infliction of the slave-badge grew into a punishment. By the Central Americans a suspected adulterer “was stripped and his hair was cut.” One ancient Mexican penalty “was to have the hair cut at some public place.” And during mediæval times in Europe cutting of hair was a punishment. Of course, by contrast, long hair became a distinction. If among the Chibchas “the greatest affront that could be put on a man or a woman was to have their hair cropped,” the assimilation to slaves in appearance was the reason: the honourableness of long hair being an implication. “The Itzaex Indians,” says Fancourt, “wore their hair as long as it would grow; indeed, it is a most difficult thing to bring the Indians to cut their hair.” Long hair shows rank among the Tongans: none are permitted to wear it but the principal people. Similarly with the New Caledonians and various others of the uncivilized; and similarly with semi-civilized Orientals: “the Ottoman princes have their beard shaved off to show that they are dependent on the favour of the reigning emperor.” By the Greeks, “in manhood, . . . hair was worn longer,” and “a certain political significancy was attached to the hair.” In Northern Europe, too, “among the Franks . . . the serfs wore the hair less long and less carefully dressed than freemen,” and the freemen less long than the nobles. “The hair of the Frank kings is sacred. . . . It is for them a mark and honourable prerogative of the royal race.” Clothair and Childebert, wishing to divide their brother’s kingdom, consulted respecting their nephews, “whether to cut off their hair so as to reduce them to the rank of subjects, or to kill them.” I may add the extreme case of the Japanese Mikado. Edition: current; Page: [63] “Neither his hair, beard, nor nails are ever [avowedly] cut, so that his sacred person may not be mutilated:” such cutting as occurs being done while he is supposed to sleep.

A parallel marking of divine rank may be noted in passing. Length of hair being significant of terrestrial dignity becomes significant, too, of celestial dignity. The gods of various peoples, and especially the great gods, are distinguished by their flowing beards and long locks.

Domestic subordination also, in many cases goes along with short hair. Under low social conditions, females commonly bear this badge of slavery. In Samoa the women wear the hair short while the men wear it long; and among other Malayo-Polynesians, as the Tahitians and New Zealanders, the like contrast occurs. Similarly with the Negrito races. “In New Caledonia the chiefs and influential men wear their hair long. . . . The women all crop theirs close to the very ears.” Cropped heads in like manner distinguish the women of Tanna, of Lifu, of Vate, and those of Tasmania. A kindred mode of signifying filial subjection has existed. Sacrifice of hair once formed part of the ceremony of adoption in Europe. “Charles Martel sent Pepin, his son, to Luithprand, king of the Lombards, that he might cut his first locks, and by this ceremony hold for the future the place of his father;” and Clovis, to make peace with Alaric, proposed to become his adopted son, by offering his beard to be cut by him.

This mutilation simultaneously came to imply subjection to dead persons. How yielding up hair to the dead is originally akin to yielding up a trophy, is well shown by the Dacotahs. “The men shave the hair off their heads, except a small tuft on the top [the scalp-lock], which they suffer to grow and wear in plaits over the shoulders: the loss of it is the usual sacrifice at the death of near relations.” That is, they go as near as may be to surrendering their scalps to the dead. The meaning is again seen in the account given of the Caribs. “As their hair thus constituted their Edition: current; Page: [64] chief pride, it was an unequivocal proof of the sincerity of their sorrow, when, on the death of a relation or friend, they cut it short like their slaves and captives.” Everywhere the uncivilized have kindred forms. Nor was it otherwise with the ancient historic races. By the Hebrews making “baldness upon their heads” was practised as a funeral rite, as was also shaving off “the corner of their beard.” Among Greeks and Romans, “the hair was cut close in mourning.” In Greece the meaning of this mutilation was recognized. Potter remarks,—“we find Electra in Euripides finding fault with Helena for sparing her locks, and thereby defrauding the dead;” and he cites the statement that this sacrifice of hair (sometimes laid upon the grave) was “partly to render the ghost of the deceased person propitious.” A significant addition must be made. “For a recent death, the mourner’s head was shaved; for an offering to the long dead, a single lock was cut off.”

Naturally if, from propitiation of the dead, some of whom become deities, there grows up religious propitiation, the offering of hair may be expected to re-appear as a religious ceremony; and we find that it does so. Already, in the just-named fact that besides the hair sacrificed at a Greek funeral, smaller sacrifices of hair were made afterwards, we see the rise of that recurring propitiation characterizing worship of a deity. And when we further read that among the Greeks “on the death of any very popular personage, as a general, it sometimes happened that all the army cut off their hair,” we are shown a step towards that propitiation by unrelated members of the community at large, which, when it becomes established, is a trait of religious worship. Hence certain Greek ceremonies. “The cutting off of the hair, which was always done when a boy became an ἔϕηβος, was a solemn act, atttended with religious ceremonies . . . and the hair after being cut off was dedicated to some deity, usually a river-god.” So, too, at the first shaving among the Romans: “the hair cut off on Edition: current; Page: [65] such occasions was consecrated to some god.” Sacrifice of hair was an act of worship with the Hebrews also. We are told of “fourscore men, having their beards shaven, and their clothes rent, and having cut themselves, with offerings and incense in their hand, to bring them to the house of the Lord;” and Krehl gives sundry kindred facts concerning the Arabians. Curious modifications of the practice occurred in ancient Peru. Small sacrifices of hair were continual. “Another offering,” writes d’Acosta, is “pulling out the eye-lashes or eye-brows and presenting them to the sun, the hills, the combles, the winds, or whatever they are in fear of.” “On entering the temples, or when they were already within them, they put their hands to their eyebrows as if they would pull out the hairs, and then made a motion as if they were blowing them towards the idol;” a good instance of the abridgment which ceremonies habitually undergo.

One further development remains. This kind of sacrifice becomes in some cases a social propitiation. Wreaths of their own hair plaited, were bestowed upon others as marks of consideration by the Tahitians. In France in the fifth and sixth centuries, it was usual to pluck out a few hairs from the beard on approaching a superior, and present them; and this usage was occasionally adopted as a mark of condescension by a ruler, as when Clovis, gratified by the visit of the Bishop of Toulouse, gave him a hair from his beard, and was imitated in so doing by his followers. Afterwards the usage had its meaning obscured by abridgment. In the times of chivalry one mode of showing respect was to tug at the moustache.

§ 362. Already, when treating of trophies, and when finding that those of the phallic class, major and minor, had the same meanings as the rest, the way was opened to explain the mutilations next to be dealt with. We have seen that when the vanquished were not killed but enslaved, Edition: current; Page: [66] it became imperative that the taking of trophies from them should neither endanger life nor be highly injurious; and that hence instead of jaws, teeth were taken; instead of hands, fingers; instead of scalps, hair. Similarly in this case, the fatal or dangerous mutilation disappearing, left only such allied mutilation as did not seriously or at all decrease the value of the enemy as a servant.

That castration was initiated by trophy-taking I find no direct proof; but there is direct proof that prisoners are sometimes treated in a way which trophy-taking of the implied kind would entail. The ancient Persians used to castrate the young men and boys of their vanquished enemies. Of Theobald, Marquis of Spoleto, we read in Gibbon that “his captives . . . were castrated without mercy.” For thinking that there was once an enforced sacrifice of the nature indicated, made to a conqueror, there is the further reason that we find a parallel sacrifice made to a deity. At the annual festivals of the Phrygian goddess Amma [Agdistis], “it was the custom for young men to make themselves eunuchs with a sharp shell, crying out at the same time, ‘Take this, Agdistis.’ ” There was a like practice among the Phœnicians; and Brinton names a severe self-mutilation of the ancient Mexican priests, which seems to have included this. Coming in the way shown to imply subordination, this usage, like many ceremonial usages, has in some cases survived where its meaning is lost. The Hottentots enforce semi-castration at about eight or nine years of age; and a kindred custom exists among the Australians.

Naturally, of this class of mutilations, the less serious is the more prevalent. Circumcision occurs among unallied races in all parts of the world—among the Malayo-Polynesians in Tahiti, in Tonga, in Madagascar; among the Negritos of New Caledonia and Fiji; among African peoples, both of the coast and the interior, from northern Abyssinia to southern Kaffir-land; in America, among some Edition: current; Page: [67] Mexican peoples, the Yucatanese, and the people of San Salvador; and we meet with it again in Australia. Even apart from the fact that their monuments show the Egyptians practiced it from early times, and even apart from the evidence that it prevailed among Arab peoples at large, these proofs that circumcision is not limited to region or race, sufficiently dispose of the current theological interpretation. They sufficiently dispose, too, of another interpretation not uncommonly given; for a general survey of the facts shows us that while the usage does not prevail among the most cleanly races in the world, it is common among the most uncleanly races. Contrariwise, the facts taken in the mass are congruous with the general theory thus far verified.

It was shown that among the Abyssinians the trophy taken by circumcision from an enemy’s dead body, is presented by each warrior to his chief; and that all such trophies taken after a battle are eventually presented to the king. If the vanquished enemies instead of being killed are made slaves; and if the warriors who have vanquished them continue to present the usual proofs of their prowess; there must arise the circumcision of living captives, who thereby become marked as subjugated persons. A further result is obvious. As the chief and the king are propitiated by bringing them these trophies taken from their foes; and as the primitive belief is that a dead man’s ghost is pleased by whatever pleased the man when alive; there will naturally follow a presentation of such trophies to the ghost of the departed ruler. And then in a highly militant society governed by a divinely-descended despot, who requires all his subjects to bear this badge of servitude, and who, dying, has his dreaded ghost anxiously propitiated; we may expect that the presentation to the king of these trophies taken from enslaved enemies, will develop into the offering to the god of like trophies taken from each generation of male citizens in acknowledgment Edition: current; Page: [68] of their slavery to him. Hence, when Movers says that among the Phœnicians circumcision was “a sign of consecration to Saturn,” and when proof is given that of old the people of San Salvador circumcised “in the Jewish manner, offering the blood to an idol,” we are shown just the result to be anticipated as eventually arising.

That this interpretation applies to the custom as made known in the Bible, is clear. We have already seen that the ancient Hebrews, like the modern Abyssinians, practised the form of trophy-taking which necessitates this mutilation of the dead enemy; and as in the one case, so in the other, it follows that the vanquished enemy not slain but made prisoner, will by this mutilation be marked as a subject person. That circumcision was among the Hebrews the stamp of subjection, all the evidence proves. On learning that among existing Bedouins, the only conception of God is that of a powerful living ruler, the sealing by circumcision of the covenant between God and Abraham becomes a comprehensible ceremony. There is furnished an explanation of the fact that in consideration of a territory to be received, this mutilation, undergone by Abraham, implied that “the Lord” was “to be a god unto” him; as also of the fact that the mark was to be borne not by him and his descendants only, as favoured individuals, but also by slaves not of his blood. And on remembering that by primitive peoples the returning double of the dead potentate is believed to be indistinguishable from the living potentate, we get an interpretation of the strange tradition concerning God’s anger with Moses for not circumcising his son:—“And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the Lord met Moses, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet.” There are further proofs that circumcision among the Jews was a mark of subordination to Jahveh. Under the foreign ruler Antiochus, who brought in foreign gods, circumcision was forbidden; and those who, persevering Edition: current; Page: [69] in it, refused obedience to these foreign gods, were slain. On the other hand, Mattathias and his friends, rebelling against foreign rule and worship, are said to have gone “round about, and pulled down the altars: and what children soever they found within the coast of Israel uncircumcised, those they circumcised valiantly.” Moreover Hyrcanus, having subdued the Idumeans, made them submit to circumcision; and Aristobulus similarly imposed the mark on the conquered people of Iturea.

Quite congruous are certain converse facts. Tooitonga (the great divine chief of Tonga) is not circumcised, as all the other men are; being unsubordinated, he does not bear the badge of subordination. And with this I may join a case in which whole tribes belonging to a race ordinarily practising circumcision, are uncircumcised where they are unsubordinated. Naming some wild Berbers in Morocco as thus distinguished, Rohlfs says, “these uncircumcised tribes inhabit the Rif mountains. . . . All the Rif mountaineers eat wild boar, in spite of the Koran law.”

§ 363. Besides mutilations entailing some loss of flesh, bone, skin, or hair, there are mutilations which do not imply a deduction; at least—not a permanent one. Of these we may take first, one which sacrifices a liquid part of the body though not a solid part.

Bleeding as a mutilation has an origin akin to the origins of other mutilations. Did we not find that some uncivilized tribes, as the Samoyedes, drink the warm blood of animals—did we not find among existing cannibals, such as the Fijians, proofs that savages drink the blood of still-living human victims; it would seem incredible that from taking the blood of a vanquished enemy was derived the ceremony of offering blood to a ghost and to a god. But when to accounts of horrors like these we join accounts of kindred ones which savages commit, such as that among the Amaponda Kaffirs “it is usual for the ruling chief, on Edition: current; Page: [70] his accession to the government, to be washed in the blood of a near relative, generally a brother, who is put to death on the occasion;” and when we infer that before civilization arose the sanguinary tastes and usages now exceptional were probably general; we may suspect that from the drinking of blood by conquering cannibals there arose some kinds of blood-offerings—at any rate, offerings of blood taken from immolated victims. Possibly some offerings of blood from the bodies of living persons are to be thus accounted for. But those which are not, are explicable as arising from the practice of establishing a sacred bond between living persons by partaking of each other’s blood: the derived conception being that those who give some of their blood to the ghost of a man just dead and lingering near, effect with it a union which on the one side implies submission, and on the other side friendliness.

On this hypothesis we have a reason for the prevalence of self-bleeding as a funeral rite, not among existing savages only, but among ancient and partially-civilized peoples—the Jews, the Greeks, the Huns, the Turks. We are shown how there arise kindred rites as permanent propitiations of those more dreaded ghosts which become gods—such offerings of blood, now from their own bodies and now from their infants’ bodies, as those which the Mexicans gave their idols; such offerings as were implied by the self-gashings of the priests of Baal; and such as were sometimes made even in propitiating Jahveh, as by the fourscore men who came from Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria. Moreover, the instances of blood-letting as a complimentary act in social intercourse, become explicable. During a Samoan marriage ceremony the friends of the bride, to testify their respect, “took up stones and beat themselves until their heads were bruised and bleeding.” “When the Indians of Potonchan (Central America) receive new friends . . . as a proof of friendship, they, in the sight of the friend, draw some blood . . . from the Edition: current; Page: [71] tongue, hand, or arm, or from some other part.” And Mr. W. Foster, Agent General for New South Wales, writes to me that he has seen an Australian mother on meeting her son after an interval of six months, gash her face with a pointed stick “until the blood streamed.”

§ 364. Cuts leave scars. If the blood-offerings which entail them are made by relatives to the departed spirit of an ordinary person, these scars are not likely to have any permanent significance; but if they are made in propitiation of a deceased chief, not by his relatives alone but by unrelated members of the tribe who stood in awe of him and fear his ghost, then, like other mutilations, they become signs of subjection. The Huns who “at the burial of Attila, cut their faces with hollow wounds,” in common with the Turks who did the like at royal funerals, thus inflicted on themselves marks which thereafter distinguished them as servants of their respective rulers. So, too, did the Lacedæmonians who, “when their king died, had a barbarous custom of meeting in vast numbers, where men, women, and slaves, all mixed together, tore the flesh from their foreheads with pins and needles . . . to gratify the ghosts of the dead.” Such customs are likely sometimes to have further results. With the apotheosis of a notable king whose conquests gave him the character of founder of the nation, marks of this kind, borne not by his contemporary followers only but imposed by them on their children, may become national marks.

That the scars caused by blood-lettings at funerals are recognized as binding to the dead those who bear them, and do develop in the way alleged, we have good evidence. The command in Leviticus, “ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you,” shows us the usage in that stage at which the scar left by sacrifice of blood is still a sign partly of family subordination and partly of other subordination. And Scandinavian traditions Edition: current; Page: [72] show us a stage at which the scar betokens allegiance either to an unspecified supernatural being, or to a deceased ruler who has become a god. Odin, “when he was near his death, made himself be marked with the point of a spear;” and Niort “before he died made himself be marked for Odin with the spear-point.”

It is probable that scars on the surface of the body, thus coming to express loyalty to a deceased father, or a deceased ruler, or a god derived from him, initiate among other disfigurements those we class as tattooing. Lacerations, and the traces they leave, are certain to take different forms in different places. The Andaman Islanders “tattoo by incising the skin . . . without inserting colouring matter, the cicatrix being whiter than the sound skin.” Some natives of Australia have ridges raised on this or that part of the body; while others brand themselves. In Tanna the people make elevated scars on their arms and chests. And Burton, in his Abeokuta, says—“the skin patterns were of every variety, from the diminutive prick to the great gash and the large boil-like lumps . . . In this country every tribe, sub-tribe, and even family, has its blazon, whose infinite diversifications may be compared with the lines and ordinaries of European heraldry.” Naturally, among the various skin-mutilations originating in the way alleged, many will, under the promptings of vanity, take on a character more or less ornamental; and the use of them for decoration will often survive when their meaning has been lost.

Hypothesis apart, we have proof that these marks are in many cases tribal marks; as they would of course become if they were originally made when men bound themselves by blood to the dead founder of the tribe. Among the Cuebas of Central America, “if the son of a chief declined to use the distinctive badge of his house, he could, when he became chief, choose any new device he might fancy;” but “a son who did not adopt his father’s totem was always Edition: current; Page: [73] hateful to him.” And if refusal to adopt the family-mark where it is painted on the body, is thus regarded as a kind of disloyalty, equally will it be so when the mark is one that has arisen from modified lacerations; and such refusal will be tantamount to rebellion where the mark signifies descent from, and submission to, some great father of the race. Hence such facts as the following:—“All these Indians” says Cieza of the ancient Peruvians, “wear certain marks by which they are known, and which were used by “their ancestors.” “Both sexes of the Sandwich Islanders have a particular mark (tattooed) which seems to indicate the district in which, or the chief under whom, they lived.”E

That a special form of tattooing becomes a tribal mark in the way suggested, we have, indeed, some direct evidence. Among the Sandwich Islanders, funeral rites at the death of a chief, such as knocking out teeth, cutting the ears, &c., one is tattooing a spot on the tongue. Here we see this mutilation becoming a sign of allegiance to a ruler who has died; and then, when the deceased ruler, unusually distinguished, is apotheosized, the tattoo mark becomes the sign of obedience to him as a deity. “With several Eastern nations,” says Grimm, “it was a custom to mark oneself by a burnt or incised sign as adherent to a certain worship.” It was thus with the Hebrews. Remembering that they were forbidden to mark themselves for the dead, we shall see the meaning of the passage in Deuteronomy—“They have corrupted themselves, the spot is not the spot of his children: they are a perverse and crooked generation.” And that such contrasted spots were understood in Edition: current; Page: [74] later times to imply the service of different deities, is suggested by passages in Revelations, where an angel is described as ordering delay “till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads,” and where “an hundred and forty and four thousand, having his Father’s name written in their foreheads,” are described as standing on Mount Sion while an angel proclaims that, “If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God.” Even now “this practice of marking religious tokens upon the hands and arms is almost universal among the Arabs, of all sects and classes.” Moreover “Christians in some parts of the East, and European sailors, were long in the habit of marking, by means of punctures and a black dye, their arms and other members of the body with the sign of the crucifix, or the image of the Virgin; the Mahommedans mark them with the name of Allah.” So that among advanced races, these skin-mutilations still have meanings like those given to them in ancient Mexico, where, when a child was dedicated to Quetzalcohuatl “the priest made a slight cut with a knife on its breast, as a sign that it belonged to the cult and service of the god,” and like those now given to them in parts of Angola, where a child as soon as born is tattooed on the belly, in order thereby to dedicate it to a certain fetich.

A significant group of evidences remains. We have seen that where cropped hair implies servitude, long hair becomes an honourable distinction; and that, occasionally, in opposition to circumcision as associated with subjection, there is absence of it along with the highest power. Here we have a parallel antithesis. The great divine chief of the Tongans is unlike all other men in Tonga, not only as being uncircumcised, but also as being untattooed. Elsewhere whole classes are thus distinguished. Not, however, that such distinctions are at all regular: we here meet with anomalies. Though in some places showing social inferiority, Edition: current; Page: [75] tattooing in other places is a trait of the superior. But the occurrence of anomalies is not surprising. During the perpetual overrunnings of race by race, it must sometimes have happened that an untattooed race having been conquered by one which practised tattooing, the presence of these markings became associated with social supremacy.

A further cause exists for this conflict of meanings. There remains to be named a species of skin-mutilation having another origin and different implication.

§ 365. Besides scars resulting from lacerations made in propitiating dead relatives, dead chiefs, and deities, there are scars resulting from wounds received in battle. All the world over, these are held in honour and displayed with pride. The sentiment associated with them among ourselves in past times, is indicated in Shakespeare by sundry references to “such as boasting shew their scars.” Lafeu says—“a scar nobly got, or a noble scar, is a good livery of honour;” and Henry V. foretells of an old soldier that ‘then will he strip his sleeve and shew his scars.”

Animated as are savages in still higher degrees than civilized by the feelings thus indicated, what may be expected to result? Will not anxiety to get honour sometimes lead to the making of scars artificially? We have evidence that it does. A Bechuana priest makes a long cut in the skin from the thigh to the knee of each warrior who has slain a man in battle. The Bachapin Kaffirs have a kindred usage. Among the Damaras, “for every wild animal that a young man destroys, his father makes four small incisions on the front of the son’s body as marks of honour and distinction.” And then Tuckey, speaking of certain Congo people who make scars, says that this is “principally done with the idea of rendering themselves agreeable to the women:” a motive which is intelligible if such scars originally passed for scars got in war, and implying bravery. Again, we read that “the Itzaex Indians [in Edition: current; Page: [76] Yucatan] have handsome faces, though some of them were marked with lines as a sign of courage.” Facts furnished by other American tribes, suggest that the infliction of torture on reaching maturity, originated from the habit of making scars artificially in imitation of scars bequeathed by battle. If self-injury to avoid service in war has been not infrequent among the cowardly, we may infer that among the courageous who had received no wounds, self-injury might be not infrequent, where there was gained by it that character desired above everything. The reputation achieved might make the practice, at first secret and exceptional, gradually more common and at length general; until, finally, public opinion, vented against those who did not follow it, made the usage peremptory. And on reading that among the Abipones, “boys of seven years old pierce their little arms in imitation of their parents, and display plenty of wounds,” we are shown the rise of a feeling, and a consequent practice, which, growing, may end in a system of initiatory tortures at manhood. Though when the scars, being borne by all, are no longer distinctive, discipline in endurance comes to be the reason given for inflicting them, this cannot have been the original reason. Primitive men, improvident in all ways, never devised and instituted a usage with a view to a foreseen distant benefit: they do not make laws, they fall into customs.

Here, then, we find an additional reason why markings on the skin, though generally badges of subordination, become in some cases honourable distinctions and occasionally signs of rank.

§ 366. Something must be added concerning a secondary motive for mutilating prisoners and slaves, parallel to, or sequent upon, a secondary motive for taking trophies.

In the last chapter we inferred that, prompted by his belief that the spirit pervades the corpse, the savage preserves relics of dead enemies partly in the expectation that Edition: current; Page: [77] he will be enabled thereby to coerce their ghosts—if not himself, still by the help of the medicine-man. He has a parallel reason for preserving a part cut from one whom he has enslaved: both he and the slave think that he so obtains a power to inflict injury. Remembering that the sorcerer’s first step is to procure some hair or nail-parings of his victim, or else some piece of his dress pervaded by that odour which is identified with his spirit; it appears to be a necessary corollary that the master who keeps by him a slave’s tooth, a joint from his little finger, or even a lock of his hair, thereby retains a power of delivering him over to the sorcerer, who may bring on him one or other fearful evil—torture by demons, disease, death.

The subjugated man is consequently made obedient by a dread akin to that which Caliban expresses of Prospero’s magically-inflicted torments.

§ 367. The evidence that mutilation of the living has been a sequence of trophy-taking from the slain, is thus abundant and varied. Taking the trophy implies victory carried to the death; and the derived practice of cutting off a part from a prisoner implies subjugation of him. Eventually the voluntary surrender of such a part expresses submission; and becomes a propitiatory ceremony because it does this.

Hands are cut off from dead enemies; and, answering to this, besides some identical mutilations of criminals, we have the cutting off of fingers or portions of fingers, to pacify living chiefs, deceased persons, and gods. Noses are among the trophies taken from slain foes; and we have loss of noses inflicted on captives, on slaves, on transgressors of certain kinds. Ears are brought back from the battle-field; and occasionally they are cut off from prisoners, felons, or slaves; while there are peoples among whom pierced ears mark the servant or the subject. Jaws and teeth, too, are trophies; and teeth, in some cases knocked out in Edition: current; Page: [78] propitiation of a dead chief, are, in various other cases, knocked out by a priest as a quasi-religious ceremony. Scalps are taken from killed enemies, and sometimes their hair is used to decorate a victor’s dress; and then come various sequences. Here the enslaved have their heads cropped; here scalp-locks are worn subject to a chief’s ownership, and occasionally demanded in sign of submission; while, elsewhere, men sacrifice their beards to their rulers: unshorn hair being thus rendered a mark of rank. Among numerous peoples, hair is sacrificed to propitiate the ghosts of relatives; whole tribes cut it off on the deaths of their chiefs or kings; and it is yielded up to express subjection to deities. Occasionally it is offered to a living superior in token of respect; and this complimentary offering is extended to others. Similarly with genital mutilations: there is a like taking of certain parts from slain enemies and from living prisoners; and there is a presentation of them to kings and to gods. Self-bleeding, initiated partly, perhaps, by cannibalism, but more extensively by the mutual giving of blood in pledge of loyalty, enters into several ceremonies expressing subordination: we find it occurring in propitiation of ghosts and of gods, and occasionally as a compliment to living persons. Naturally it is the same with the resulting marks. Originally indefinite in form and place but rendered definite by custom, and at length often decorative, these healed wounds, at first entailed only on relatives of deceased persons, then on all of the followers of a man much feared while alive, so become marks expressive of subjection to a dead ruler, and eventually to a god: growing thus into tribal and national marks.

If, as we have seen, trophy-taking as a sequence of conquest enters as a factor into those governmental restraints which conquest initiates, it is to be inferred that the mutilations originated by trophy-taking will do the like. The evidence justifies this inference. Beginning as marks of Edition: current; Page: [79] personal slavery and becoming marks of political and religious subordination, they play a part like that of oaths of fealty and pious self-dedications. Moreover, being acknowledgments of submission to a ruler, visible or invisible, they enforce authority by making conspicuous the extent of his sway. And where they signify class-subjection, as well as where they show the subjugation of criminals, they further strengthen the regulative agency.

If mutilations originate as alleged, some connexion must exist between the extent to which they are carried and the social type. On grouping the facts as presented by fifty-two peoples, the connexion emerges with as much clearness as can be expected. In the first place, since mutilation originates with conquest and resulting aggregation, it is inferable that simple societies, however savage, will be less characterized by it than the larger savage societies compounded out of such, and less than even semi-civilized societies. This proves to be true. Of peoples who form simple societies that practice mutilation either not at all or in slight forms, I find eleven—Fuegians, Veddahs, Andamanese, Dyaks, Todas, Gonds, Santals, Bodo and Dhimals, Mishmis, Kamstchadales, Snake Indians; and these are characterized throughout either by absence of chieftainship, or by chieftainship of an unsettled kind. Meanwhile, of peoples who mutilate little or not at all, I find but two in the class of uncivilized compound societies; of which one, the Kirghiz, is characterized by a wandering life that makes subordination difficult; and the other, the Iroquois, had a republican form of government. Of societies practising mutilations that are moderate, the simple bear a decreased ratio to the compound: of the one class there are ten—Tasmanians, Tannese, New Guinea people, Karens, Nagas, Ostyaks, Esquimaux, Chinooks, Comanches, Chippewayans; while of the other class there are five—New Zealanders, East Africans, Khonds, Kukis, Kalmucks. And of these it is to be remarked, that in the one class the Edition: current; Page: [80] simple headship, and in the other class the compound headship, is unstable. On coming to the societies distinguished by severer mutilations, we find these relations reversed. Among the simple I can name but three—the New Caledonians (among whom, however, the severer mutilation is not general), the Bushmen (who are believed to have lapsed from a higher social state), and the Australians (who have, I believe, similarly lapsed); while, among the compound, twenty-one may be named—Fijians, Sandwich Islanders, Tahitians, Tongans, Samoans, Javans, Sumatrans, Malagasy, Hottentots, Damaras, Bechuanas, Kaffirs, Congo people, Coast Negroes, Inland Negroes, Dahomans, Ashantees, Fulahs, Abyssinians, Arabs, Dacotahs. In the second place, social consolidation being habitually effected by conquest, and compound and doubly-compound societies being therefore, during early stages, militant in their activities and types of structure, it follows that the connexion of the custom of mutilation with the size of the society is indirect, while that with its type is direct. And this the facts show us. If we put side by side those societies which are most unlike in respect of the practice of mutilation, we find them to be those which are most unlike as being wholly unmilitant in organization, and wholly militant in organization. At the one extreme we have the Veddas, Todas, Bodo and Dhimals; while, at the other extreme, we have the Fijians, Abyssinians, and ancient Mexicans.

Derived from trophy-taking, and developing with the development of the militant type, mutilations must, by implication, decrease as fast as the societies consolidated by militancy become less militant, and must disappear as the industrial type of structure evolves. That they do so, European history at large may be assigned in proof. And it is significant that in our own society, now predominantly industrial, such slight mutilations as continue are connected with that regulative part of the organization which militancy has bequeathed: there survive only the now-meaningless Edition: current; Page: [81] tattooings of sailors, the branding of deserters (until recently), and the cropping of the heads of felons.