Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/210

198 dress. The same is true of many of the masks of North American tribes. Similar in idea are the curious and often really beautiful neck-girdles of red cedar bark worn by the secret religious organizations of the Kwakiutl and their neighbors in the far Northwest.

Somewhat akin to dress worn by worshipers and servants are those garments worn by victims who are to be sacrificed to the gods. At Teotihuacan in Mexico there have been and still are found great numbers of neatly made little terra-cotta heads of human beings. These are exceedingly various in design, the differences being most marked in the head-dresses. There is considerable uncertainty as to the purpose of these little heads, but Mrs. Zelia Nuttall has written an article wherein is offered an explanation that seems plausible. She suggests that they were buried with the dead, and that the head-dresses represent those worn by victims for sacrifice. That such victims were differently adorned for different gods is certain, and it may be that these pretty little relics really give representations of the way in which they were dressed.

Some time perhaps civilized peoples will give up the wearing of mourning for the dead. Why should any men or women force their private griefs upon all about them? Why increase the dolefulness of death? No doubt many who wear black would say that they do so from respect for the dead. Is it not in reality because fashion dictates it? Mourning dress is nothing new, nor is it confined to civilized races. Nor is the color of mourning a fixed thing. Black is very widely used, but some peoples use white. In New Zealand old people paint themselves freely with red ochre and wear wreaths of green leaves. Besides the wearing of a peculiar garb or of a special color to show grief, the mourners may disfigure themselves, or they may wear some relic of the dead friend. The curious practice of cutting off joints of the fingers is wide-spread. Among some American tribes, among Australians, Africans, and Polynesians it is a sign of grief. The Fijians used to chop off finger-joints to appease an angry chieftain, or for death of a relative, or as a token of affection. In Tonga finger-joints were cut when a superior relative was ill. In all these cases