Part 87 (1/2)

[90] Boas, cited by Mallery, 534.

[91] Mallery, 1888-89, 197, 623-629.

[92] See also the remarks in Prazer's _Totemism_, 26.

[93] _Explor. and Surv. Mississippi River to Pacific Ocean_. Senate Reports, Was.h.i.+ngton, 1856, III., 33.

[94] See the pages (386-91) on the ”Fas.h.i.+on Fetish” in my _Romantic Love and Personal Beauty_.

[95] _Jour. Roy. As. Soc_., 1860, 13.

[96] Feathers also serve various other useful purposes to Australians.

An ap.r.o.n of emu feathers distinguishes females who are not yet matrons. (Smyth, I., xl.) Howitt says that in Central Australia messengers sent to avenge a death are painted yellow and wear feathers on their head and in the girdle at the spine. (Mallery, 1888-89, 483.)

[97] Related by Dieffenbach. Heriot even declares of the northern Indians (352) that ”they a.s.sert that they find no odor agreeable but that of food.”

[98] For other references to ancient nations, see Joest in _Zeitschr.

fur Ethnologie._ 1888, 415.

[99] See, for instance, Spix and Martius, 384.

[100] See _e.g_. Eyre, II. 333-335; Brough Smith, L, XLI, 68, 295, II., 313; Ridley, _Kamilaroi_, 140; _Journ. Roy. Soc. N.S.W_., 1882, 201; and the old authorities cited by Waitz-Gerland, VI., 740; cf Frazer, 29. If Westermarck had been more anxious to ascertain the truth than to prove a theory, would he have found it necessary to ignore all this evidence, neglecting to refer even to Chatfield in speaking of Curr?

[101] H. Ward, 136.

[102] Roth, II, 83.

[103] Martius, I., 321.

[104] Boas, _Bur. Ethnol._, 1884-88, 561.

[105] Mann, _Journ. Anthr. Soc._, XII, 333.

[106] Galton, 148.

[107] Dalton, 251.

[108] Waitz-Gerland, VI., 30.

[109] Mallery, 1888-89, 414.

[110] To take three cases in place of many Carl Bock relates (67) that among some Borneans tattooing is one of the privileges of matrimony and is _not allowed to unmarried girls_. D'Urville describes the tattooing of the wife of chief Tuao, who seemed to glory in the ”_new honor_ his wife was securing by these decorations.” (Robley, 41.) Among the Papuans of New Guinea tattooing the chest of females denotes that they _are married_. (Mallery, 411.)

[111] It is significant that Westermarck (179) though he refers to page 90 of Turner, ignores the pa.s.sage I have just cited, though it occurs on the same page.

[112] Australia is by no means the only country where the women are less decorated than the men. Various explanations have been offered, but none of them covers all the facts. The real reason becomes obvious if my view is accepted that the alleged ornaments of savages are not esthetic, but practical or utilitarian. The women are usually allowed to share such things as badges of mourning, amulets, and various devices that attract attention to wealth or rank; but the religious rites, and the manifold decorations a.s.sociated with military life--the chief occupation of these peoples--they are not allowed to share, and these, with the tribal marks, furnish, as we have seen, the occasion for the most diverse and persistent ”decorative” practices.

[113] The advocates of the s.e.xual selection theory might have avoided many grotesque blunders had they possessed a sense of humor to counterbalance and control their erudition. The violent opposition of Madagascar women to King Radama's order that the men should have their hair cut, to which Westermarck refers (174-75), surely finds in the proverbial stupid conservatism of barbarous customs a simpler and more rational explanation than in his a.s.sumption that this riot ill.u.s.trated ”the important part played by the hair of the head as a stimulant of s.e.xual pa.s.sion” (to these coa.r.s.e, masculine women, who had to be speared before they could be quieted). An argument which attributes to unwashed, vermin-covered savages a fanatic zeal for what they consider as beautiful, such as no civilized devotee of beauty would ever dream of, involves its own _reductio ad absurdum_ by proving too much.

Westermarck also cites (177) from a book on Brazil the story that if a young maiden of the Tapoyers ”be marriageable, and yet not courted by any, the mother paints her with some red color about the eyes,” and in accordance with his theory we are soberly expected to accept this red paint about the eyes as an effective ”stimulant of s.e.xual pa.s.sion,” in case of a girl whose appearance otherwise did not tempt men to court her! The obvious object of the paint was to indicate that the girl was in the market. In other words, it was part of that language of signs which had such a remarkable development among some of the uncivilized races (see Mallery's admirable treatises on Indian Pictographs, taking up hundreds of pages in two volumes of the Bureau of Ethnology at Was.h.i.+ngton). Belden relates (145) of the Plains Indians that a warrior who is courting a squaw usually paints his eyes yellow or blue, and the squaw paints hers red. He even knew squaws, go through the painful operation of reddening the eyeb.a.l.l.s, which he interprets as resulting from a desire to fascinate the men; but it is much more likely that it had some special significance in the language of courts.h.i.+p, probably as a mark of courage in enduring pain, than that the inflamed eye itself was considered beautiful. Belden himself further points out that ”a red stripe drawn horizontally from one eye to the other, means that the young warrior has seen a squaw he could love if she would reciprocate his attachment,” and on p. 144 he explains that ”when a warrior smears his face with lampblack and then draws zigzags with his nails, it is a sign that he desires to be left alone, or is trapping, or melancholy, or in love.” I had intended to give a special paragraph to Decorations as Parts of the Language of Signs, but desisted on reflecting that most of the foregoing facts relating to war, mourning, tribal, etc., decorations, really came under that head.

[114] _Trans. Eth. Soc.,_ London, N.S., VII., 238; _Journ. Asiatic Soc. Bengal,_ x.x.xV., Pt. II., 25. Spencer, _D.S._