Page:War and Other Essays.djvu/53

Rh the ghosts protect it; and any stranger, furtive, suppliant, even an enemy, if admitted, comes under the house protection and hospitality while there. As the house becomes larger and better the peace-taboo extends from the fireplace to the whole house and then to the yard or enclosure. This is the house-peace.

If any group which possesses deposits of salt, flint-stone fit for implements, pipe-stone, water supply, or special foods should try to prevent others from having access to the same, all others would join in war against that one until an agreement was made and established by usage. This agreement is either one of peaceful access to natural supplies or one of trade. Tribes also agree to take wives from each other. We often have reason to be astonished at the institution-making power of nature-men when disagreeable experience has forced them to find relief. The Tubu of the Sahara are warlike and distrustful even of each other to such an extent that they scarcely form a society; even in their villages they quarrel and fight. It is a very noteworthy feature that these people have no notion of rights. It is the in-group as a peace-group which is the school of rights; as we have seen, there can be peace and order inside only by law (using this term in its broadest sense); but a law creates and enforces rights. Now these Tubu have been forced to make a law that inside the village no weapons may be worn, so that here already we find an institutional arrangement to limit warlikeness. When Nachtigal, visiting the Tubu, complained of their ill usage of himself and threatened to go away, they pointed out to him that as soon as he had left their territory he would be at their mercy. This shows that even they had an idea of some rights of a guest inside their group as