Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/666

646 from the jaws as trophies without seriously decreasing the usefulness of the prisoner. Hence another form of mutilation.

We have seen that teeth are worn as trophies in Ashantee and in South America. Now, if teeth are taken as trophies from captives who are preserved as slaves, loss of them must become a mark of subjection. Of facts directly showing that a propitiatory ceremony hence arises I can name but one. Among mutilations submitted to on the death of a king or chief in the Sandwich Islands, Ellis names knocking out one of the front teeth; an alternative being cutting the ears. The implication is tolerably clear; and when we further read in Cook that the Sandwich-Islanders knock out from one to four of the front teeth—when we see that the whole population becomes marked by these repeated mutilations undergone to propitiate the ghosts of dead rulers—when we infer that in propitiation of a much dreaded ruler deified after death, not only those who knew him may submit to this loss, but also their children subsequently born—we see how the practice, becoming established, may survive as a sacred custom when its meaning is lost. For, concluding that the practice has this sacramental nature, there are the further reasons derived from the fixing of the age for the operation, and from the character of the operator. Angas tells us that in New South Wales it is the Koradger men or priests who perform the ceremony of knocking out the teeth; and of a semi-domesticated Australian Haygarth writes that he said one day, "with a look of importance, that he must go away for a few days, as he had grown up to man's estate, and 'it was high time that he should have his teeth knocked out.' "Various African races, as the Batoka, the Dor, etc., similarly lose two or more of their front teeth; and habitually the loss of them is an obligatory rite. But the best evidence (which I have found since setting down the above) is furnished by the ancient Peruvians. A tradition among certain of them was that the conqueror Huayna Ceapac, finding them disobedient, "made a law that they and their descendants should have three of their front teeth pulled out in each jaw." Another tradition, given by Cieza, naturally derivable from the last, was that this pulling out of teeth by fathers from their young children was "a service very acceptable to their gods." And then, as happens with other mutilations of which the meaning has dropped out of memory, the improvement of the appearance was in some parts the assigned motive.

It should be added that, in this case as in most cases, the mutilation assumes modified forms. The Damaras knock "out a wedge shaped gap between their two front teeth;" "the natives in the neighborhood of Sierra Leone file or chip the teeth;" and various other tribes have allied usages.

As the transition from eating conquered enemies to making slaves of them mitigates trophy-taking so as to avoid causing death; and,