Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/768

 754 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

representatives fight, while the spectators cheer their men, and the women bring food and drink. When a man is seriously hurt, the fighting ceases, and differences are adjusted. On the island of Sumba hostile groups meet and engage in conflicts which are seldom bloody, and not really designed to be serious. The party receiving first a few wounds declares itself defeated, and a festival follows. Among the Botocudos of South America a song is sung by each side before the fight begins ; and among the Tlinket Indians two combatants provided with wooden masks and thick shields decide disputes arising between groups, while the spectators applaud, sing, and dance, much as at our football games. A very striking expression of aesthetic interest in war is also found on the coast of New Mecklenburg, where tribes habitually hostile and cannibalistic meet peaceably by agreement one day in the year, and at the close of the day deliberately and painstakingly insult each other, with the apparent design of stirring up enough anger to last for another year.

Finally, the contest becomes purely artistic among the Green- landers and the Arabs, where disputes are settled by song con- tests. Among the Greenlanders the contestant making his opponent appear ridiculous and putting him out of countenance gets the applause of the public and the verdict ; and his oppo- nent is often so shamed that he leaves the community. Among some of the ancient Arab tribes two contestants placed their dispute before unprejudiced judges, along with pledges guaran- teeing acquiescence in the decision. In this contest, called mufachara, the arguments were not in prose, but in poetry, and the decision was not given on the justice of the case, but on the merits of the poetry.

But neither fighting nor a show of fighting, nor its imitations in various forms of sport, exhausts the possibilities of interest bound up in the conflict principle. Even among animals we find different forms of cunning employed in the struggle for existence ; and in the more highly organized forms, with more perfect development of associative memory, deception .plays almost as important a role as open force in connection with predacious activities. In mankind the memory and judgment