Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/565

Rh This last instance draws attention to the fact that this barbarous custom has been, and is, carried to the greatest extremes, along with militancy the most excessive. Among ancient examples there are the doings of Timour, with his exaction of 90,000 heads from Bagdad. Of modern examples the most notable comes from Dahomey. "The sleeping-apartment of a Dahoman king," says Burton, "was paved with the skulls of neighboring princes and chiefs, placed there that the king might tread upon them." And, according to Dalzel, the king's statement, that "his house wanted thatch," was "used in giving orders to his generals to make war, and alludes to the custom of placing the heads of the enemy killed in battle, or those of the prisoners of distinction, on the roofs of the guard-houses at the gates of his palaces."

But now, ending instances, let us observe how this taking of heads as trophies initiates a means of strengthening political power; how it becomes a factor in sacrificial ceremonies; and how it enters into social intercourse as a controlling influence. That the pyramids and towers of heads built by Timour at Bagdad and Aleppo, must have conduced to his supremacy by striking terror into the subjugated, as well as by exciting dread of vengeance for insubordination among his followers, cannot be doubted; and that living in a dwelling paved and decorated with skulls, implies, in a Dahoman king, a character generating fear among enemies and obedience among subjects, is obvious. In Northern Celebes, where, before 1822, "human skulls were the great ornaments of the chiefs' houses," these proofs of victory in battle, used as symbols of authority, could not fail to exercise a governmental effect.

That heads are offered in propitiation of the dead, and that the ceremony of offering them is thus made part of a quasi-worship, there are clear proofs. One is supplied by the people just named. "When a chief died his tomb must be adorned with two fresh human heads, and if those of enemies could not be obtained slaves were killed for the occasion." Among the Dyaks, who, though in many respects advanced, have retained this barbarous practice sanctified by tradition, it is the same: "the aged warrior could not rest in his grave till his relatives had taken a head in his name." By the Kukis of Northern India sacrificial head-taking is carried still further. Making raids into the plains to procure heads, they "have been known in one night to carry off fifty. These are used in certain ceremonies performed at the funerals of the chiefs, and it is always after the death of one of their rajahs that these incursions occur."

That the possession of these grisly tokens of success gives an influence in social intercourse, proof is yielded by the following passage from St. John: "Head-hunting is not so much a religious ceremony among the Pakatans, Borneo, as merely to show their bravery and manliness. When they quarrel, it is a constant phrase,