Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/564

546 by bringing back some part of him—especially a part which the corpse could not yield in duplicate—he raises his character in the tribe and increases his power. Preservation of trophies, with a view to display and consequent strengthening of personal influence, therefore becomes an established custom. In Ashantee "the smaller joints, bones, and teeth of the slain are worn by the victors about their persons." Among the Ceris and Opatas of North Mexico, "many cook and eat the flesh of their captives, reserving the bones as trophies." And another Mexican race, "the Chichimecs, carried with them a bone on which, when they killed an enemy, they marked a notch, as a record of the number each had slain." The meaning of trophy-taking, and its social effects, being recognized, let us consider in groups the various forms of it.

Of parts cut from the bodies of the slain, heads are the commonest; probably as being the most unmistakable proofs of victory.

We need not go far afield for illustrations both of the practice and its motives. The most familiar of books contains them. In Judges vii. 25, we read: "And they took two princes of the Midianites, Oreb and Zeeb; and they slew Oreb upon the rock Oreb, and Zeeb they slew at the wine-press of Zeeb, and pursued Midian, and brought the heads of Oreb and Zeeb to Gideon on the other side Jordan." The decapitation of Goliath by David, followed by carrying of his head to Jerusalem, further illustrates the custom. And, if, by so superior a race, heads' were taken home as trophies, we shall not wonder at finding the custom of so taking them among inferior races all over the globe. By the Chichimecs in North America "the heads of the slain were placed on poles and paraded through their villages in token of victory, the inhabitants meanwhile dancing round them." In South America, by the Abipones, heads are brought back from battle "tied to their saddles;" and the Mundrucus "ornament their rude and miserable cabanas with these horrible trophies." Of Malayo-Polynesians having a like habit, may be named the New-Zealanders; they dry and treasure up the heads of their slain foes. In Madagascar, during Queen Ranavalona's reign, heads raised on poles were placed along the coast. Skulls of enemies are preserved as trophies by the natives on the Congo, and by other African peoples: "The skull and thighbones of the last monarch of Dinkira are still trophies of the court of Ashantee." Among the Hill-tribes of India, the Kukis may be instanced as having this practice. Morier tells us that in Persia, under the stimulus of money-payments, "prisoners" (of war) "have been put to death in cold blood, in order that the heads, which are immediately dispatched to the king and deposited in heaps at the palace-gate, might make a more considerable show." And that among other Asiatic races head-taking persists spite of semi-civilization, we are reminded by the recent doings of the Turks, who have in some cases exhumed the bodies of slain foes and decapitated them.