Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/680

660, and gods. Noses are among the trophies taken from slain foes; and we have loss of noses inflicted on prisoners, on slaves, on transgressors of certain kinds. Ears are brought back from the battlefield; and occasionally they are cut off from prisoners, criminals, or slaves; while there are people among whom pierced ears mark the servant or the subject. Jaws and teeth, too, are trophies; and teeth, in some cases knocked out in propitiation of a dead chief, are, in various other cases, knocked out by a priest as a quasi-religious ceremony. Most prevalent and complete is the evidence furnished by mutilation of the hair. Scalps are taken from killed enemies, and sometimes their hair is used to decorate a victor's dress; and then come various sequences. Here the enslaved have their heads cropped; here scalp-locks are worn subject to a chiefs ownership, and these are demanded in sign of submission; while, elsewhere, men are shorn of their beards to ornament the robe of a superior: unshorn hair being thus rendered a mark of rank. Among numerous peoples, hair is sacrificed to propitiate the ghosts of relatives; whole tribes cut it on the deaths of their chiefs or kings; it is yielded up to express subjection to deities; occasionally it is offered to a living superior in token of respect; and this complimentary offering is extended to others. Similarly with genital mutilations, there is a like, taking of parts from slain enemies and from living prisoners; and there is a presentation of them to kings and to gods. Nor is it otherwise with mutilations of another class. Self bleeding, initiated partly, perhaps, by cannibalism, but more extensively by the mutual giving of blood in pledge of loyalty, enters into several ceremonies expressing subordination: we find it occurring in propitiation of ghosts and of gods, and occasionally as a compliment to living persons. Naturally it is the same with the resulting marks. Originally indefinite in form and place, but rendered definite by custom, and at length often decorative, these healed wounds, at first entailed only on relatives of deceased persons, then on all the followers of a man who was much feared while alive, so became marks expressive of subjection to a dead ruler, and eventually to a god: thus growing into tribal and national marks.

If, as we have seen, trophy-taking as a sequence of conquest enters as a factor into those governmental restraints which conquest initiates, it is to be inferred that the mutilations originated by trophy-taking will do the like. The evidence justifies this inference. Beginning as marks of personal slavery, and becoming marks of political and religious subordination, they play a part like that of oaths of fealty and pious self-dedications. Moreover, being public acknowledgments of submission to a ruler, visible or invisible, they enforce authority by making conspicuous to all eyes the extent of his sway. And where they signify class-subordination, as well as where they show the subjugation of criminals, they further strengthen the hands of the regulative agency.