Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/676

656 descent from, and submission to, some great father of the race. Hence, then, the meaning of such facts as the following: "All these Indians," says Cieza of the ancient Peruvians, "wear certain marks by which they are known, and which were used by their ancestors. . . . Both sexes of the Sandwich-Islanders have a particular mark (tattooed) which seems to indicate the district in which, or the chief under whom, they lived." Of the Uaupes, "one tribe, the Tucános, are distinguished from the rest by three vertical blue lines on the chin."

That a special form of tattooing becomes a tribal mark in the way suggested, we have, indeed, some direct evidence. Among sundry mutilations undergone as funeral-rites, at the death of a chief among the Sandwich-Islanders, such as knocking out teeth, cutting the ears, cutting hair, etc., one is tattooing a spot on the tongue. Here we see this mutilation acquiring the signification of allegiance to a ruler who has died; and then when the deceased ruler, unusually distinguished, is apotheosized, the tattoo-mark becomes the sign of obedience to him as a deity. "With several Eastern nations," says Grimm, "it was a custom to mark one's self by a burned or incised sign as adherent to a certain worship. . . . Philo complains of his country-people in this respect." It was thus with the Hebrews. Bearing in mind the above-quoted interdict against marking themselves for the dead, we shall see the meaning of the words in Deuteronomy—"They have corrupted themselves, the spot is not the spot of his children: they are a perverse and crooked generation." And that such contrasted spots as are here referred to were understood in later times to imply the service of different deities is suggested by passages in Revelation, where an angel is described as ordering delay "till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads," and where "an hundred and forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads," are described as standing on Mount Sion, while an angel proclaims that, "if any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God." Down to the present day in the East like marks have like meanings. Thomson, after specifying the method of tattooing, says: "This practice of marking religious tokens upon the hands and arms is almost universal among the Arabs of all sects and classes. Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem have the operation performed there, as the most holy place known to their religion." And still more definite is the statement of Kalisch, that "Christians in some parts of the East, and European sailors, were long in the habit of marking, by means of punctures and a black dye, their arms and other members of the body with the sign of the crucifix or the image of the Virgin; the Mohammedans mark them with the name of Allah." So that down to our own time among advanced races we trace in these skin-mutilations meanings like those avowedly