Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/817

 INFLUENCE OF SUPERSTITION ON PROPERTY RIGHTS 803

sanctity was founded has ceased to prevail."^® The natives of Rotuma, an island adjacent to Fiji, are, we are told, honest to a degree. If a man picks a cocoanut off another man's land, he will always tell the owner of it. For there is a superstition that if a person eats or touches the food of another, the latter if he knows of the act, can by magic cause the food to kill the offender. ^^

The tribes of the Malay Archipelago present us with analo- gous customs. On the island of Timor, according to Alfred Russel Wallace, pomali is very general. It places under its mystical protection fruit-trees, houses, crops, and property of all kinds. A few palm-leaves "stuck outside a garden as a sign of the pomali will preserve its produce from thieves as effectually as the threatening notice of man-traps, spring-guns, or a savage dog would do with us."^* When one of the Kubus, a small tribe of central Sumatra, on passing through the forest, is lucky enough to find a bee-infested tree, he clears away the brush around it, makes one or two hacks on the bark, and recites a spell. Henceforth the tree is his. No one will dispute possession with him.^*

A system of property taboos not unlike that just described pre- vails in Madagascar^^ and in various parts of continental Africa. Thus the Balonda of South Africa who kept their beehives on high trees in the forest, protected them by fastening a charm or "piece of medicine" round the tree-trunks. "The natives," says Livingstone, "seldom rob each other, for all believe that certain medicines can inflict disease and death ; and though they consider that these are only known to a few, they act on the principle that it is best to let them all alone. The gloom of these forests strengthens the superstitious feelings of the people."^^ The

'^Ibid., II, 33.

'^ Gardiner in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. (1898), XXVII, 409.

^The Malay Archipelago (London, 1869), I, 306. Cf. II, 450.

•Forbes in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. (1885), XIV, 125.

des hautes itudes, sciences religieuses (Paris, 1904), XVII, 183-93.
 * Van Gennep, "Tabou et totemisme a Madagascar," Bibliothkque de I'icole

'^Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (New York, 1870), p. 307.