Part 12
It would have been strange, indeed, had the primitive assumption in philology been true, and the history of language exhibited universal degradation.
In the remarks on the “Origin of Man,” the statement was made that mankind was distributed throughout the habitable earth, in some geological period anterior to the present and anterior to the development of other than the rudest arts. Here, again, we reach the conclusion that man was distributed throughout the earth anterior to the development of organized speech.
In the presence of these two great facts, the difficulty of tracing genetic relationship among human races through arts, customs, institutions, and traditions will appear, for all of these must have been developed after the dispersion of mankind. Analogies and homologies in these phenomena must be accounted for in some other way. Somatology proves the unity of the human species; that is, the evidence upon which this conclusion is reached is morphologic; but in arts, customs, institutions, and traditions abundant corroborative evidence is found. The individuals of the one species, though inhabiting diverse climes, speaking diverse languages, and organized into diverse communities, have progressed in a broad way by the same stages, have had the same arts, customs, institutions, and traditions in the same order, limited only by the degree of progress to which the several tribes have attained, and modified only to a limited extent by variations in environment.
If any ethnic classification of mankind is to be established more fundamental than that based upon language, it must be upon physical characteristics, and such must have been acquired by profound differentiation anterior to the development of languages, arts, customs, institutions, and traditions. The classifications hitherto made on this basis are unsatisfactory, and no one now receives wide acceptance. Perhaps further research will clear up doubtful matters and give an acceptable grouping; or it may be that such research will result only in exhibiting the futility of the effort.
The history of man, from the lowest tribal condition to the highest national organization, has been a history of constant and multifarious admixture of strains of blood; of admixture, absorption, and destruction of languages with general progress toward unity; of the diffusion of arts by various processes of acculturation; and of admixture and reciprocal diffusion of customs, institutions, and traditions. Arts, customs, institutions, and traditions extend beyond the boundaries of languages and serve to obscure them, and the admixture of strains of blood has obscured primitive ethnic divisions, if such existed.
If the physical classification fails, the most fundamental grouping left is that based on language; but for the reasons already mentioned and others of like character, the classification of languages is not, to the full extent, a classification of peoples.
It may be that the unity of the human race is a fact so profound that all attempts at a fundamental classification to be used in all the departments of anthropology will fail, and that there will remain multifarious groupings for the multifarious purposes of the science; or, otherwise expressed, that languages, arts, customs, institutions, and traditions may be classified, and that the human family will be considered as one race.
MYTHOLOGY.
Here again America presents a rich field for the scientific explorer. It is now known that each linguistic stock has a distinct mythology, and as in some of these stocks there are many languages differing to a greater or less extent, so there are many like differing mythologies.
As in language, so in mythology, investigation has proceeded from the known to the unknown--from the higher to the lower mythologies. In each step of the progress of opinion on this subject a particular phenomenon may be observed. As each lower status of mythology is discovered it is assumed to be the first in origin, the primordial mythology, and all lower but imperfectly understood mythologies are interpreted as degradations, from this assumed original belief; thus polytheism was interpreted as a degeneracy from monotheism; nature worship, from psychotheism; zoölotry, from ancestor worship; and, in order, monotheism has been held to be the original mythology, then polytheism, then physitheism or nature worship, then ancestor worship.
With a large body of mythologists nature worship is now accepted as the primitive religion; and with another body, equally as respectable, ancestor worship is primordial. But nature worship and ancestor worship are concomitant parts of the same religion, and belong to a status of culture highly advanced and characterized by the invention of conventional pictographs. In North America we have scores or even hundreds of systems of mythology, all belonging to a lower state of culture.
Let us hope that American students will not fall into this line of error by assuming that zoötheism is the lowest stage, because this is the status of mythology most widely spread on the continent.
Mythology is primitive philosophy. A mythology--that is, the body of myths current among any people and believed by them--comprises a system of explanations of all the phenomena of the universe discerned by them; but such explanations are always mixed with much extraneous matter, chiefly incidents in the history of the personages who were the heroes of mythologic deeds.
Every mythology has for its basis a theology--a system of gods who are the actors, and to whom are attributed the phenomena to be explained--for the fundamental postulate in mythology is “some one does it,” such being the essential characteristic of subjective reasoning. As peoples pass from one stage of culture to another, the change is made by developing a new sociology with all its institutions, by the development of new arts, by evolution of language, and, in a degree no less, by a change in philosophy; but the old philosophy is not supplanted. The change is made by internal growth and external accretion.
Fragments of the older are found in the newer. This older material in the newer philosophy is often used for curious purposes by many scholars. One such use I wish to mention here. The nomenclature which has survived from the earlier state is supposed to be deeply and occultly symbolic and the mythic narratives to be deeply and occultly allegoric. In this way search is made for some profoundly metaphysic cosmogony; some ancient beginning of the mythology is sought in which mystery is wisdom and wisdom is mystery.
The objective or scientific method of studying a mythology is to collect and collate its phenomena simply as it is stated and understood by the people to whom it belongs. In tracing back the threads of its historical development the student should expect to find it more simple and childlike in every stage of his progress.
It is vain to search for truth in mythologic philosophy, but it is important to search for veritable philosphies, that they may be properly compared and that the products of the human mind in its various stages of culture may be known; important in the reconstruction of the history of philosophy; and important in furnishing necessary data to psychology. No labor can be more fruitless than the search in mythology for true philosophy; and the efforts to build up from the terminology and narratives of mythologies an occult symbolism and system of allegory is but to create a new and fictitious body of mythology.
There is a symbolism inherent in language and found in all philosophy, true or false, and such symbolism was cultivated as an occult art in the early history of civilization when picture-writing developed into conventional writing, and symbolism is an interesting subject for study, but it has been made a beast of burden to carry packs of metaphysic nonsense.
SOCIOLOGY.
Here again North America presents a wide and interesting field to the investigator, for it has within its extent many distinct governments, and these governments, so far as investigations have been carried, are found to belong to a type more primitive than any of the feudalities from which the civilized nations of the earth sprang, as shown by concurrently recorded history.
Yet in this history many facts have been discovered suggesting that feudalities themselves had an origin in something more primitive. In the study of the tribes of the world a multitude of sociologic institutions and customs have been discovered, and in reviewing the history of feudalities it is seen that many of their important elements are survivals from tribal society.
So important are these discoveries that all human history has to be rewritten, the whole philosophy of history reconstructed. Government does not begin in the ascendency of chieftains through prowess in war, but in the slow specialization of executive functions from communal associations based on kinship. Deliberative assemblies do not start in councils gathered by chieftains, but councils precede chieftaincies. Law does not begin in contract, but is the development of custom. Land tenure does not begin in grants from the monarch or the feudal lord, but a system of tenure in common by gentes or tribes is developed into a system of tenure in severalty. Evolution in society has not been from militancy to industrialism, but from organization based on kinship to organization based on property, and alongside of the specializations of the industries of peace the arts of war have been specialized.
So, one by one, the theories of metaphysical writers on sociology are overthrown, and the facts of history are taking their place, and the philosophy of history is being erected out of materials accumulating by objective studies of mankind.
PSYCHOLOGY.
Psychology has hitherto been chiefly in the hands of subjective philosophers and is the last branch of anthropology to be treated by scientific methods. But of late years sundry important labors have been performed with the end in view to give this department of philosophy a basis of objective facts; especially the organ of the mind has been studied and the mental operations of animals have been compared with those of men, and in various other ways the subject is receiving scientific attention.
The new psychology in process of construction will have a threefold basis: A physical basis on phenomena presented by the organ of the mind as shown in man and the lower animals; a linguistic basis as presented in the phenomena of language, which is the instrument of mind; a functional basis as exhibited in operations of the mind.
The phenomena of the third class may be arranged in three subclasses. First, the operations of mind exhibited in individuals in various stages of growth, various degrees of culture, and in various conditions, normal and abnormal; second, the operations of mind as exhibited in technology, arts, and industries; third, the operations of mind as exhibited in philosophy; and these are the explanations given of the phenomena of the universe. On such a basis a scientific psychology must be erected.
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As methods of study are discovered, a vast field opens to the American scholar. Now, as at all times in the history of civilization, there has been no lack of interest in this subject, and no lack of speculative writers; but there is a great want of trained observers and acute investigators.
If we lay aside the mass of worthless matter which has been published, and consider only the material used by the most careful writers, we find on every hand that conclusions are vitiated by a multitude of errors of fact of a character the most simple. Yesterday I read an article on the “Growth of Sculpture,” by Grant Allen, that was charming; yet, therein I found this statement:
So far as I know, the Polynesians and many other savages have not progressed beyond the full-face stage of human portraiture above described. Next in rank comes the drawing of a profile, as we find it among the Eskimos and the bushmen. Our own children soon attain to this level, which is one degree higher than that of the full face, as it implies a special point of view, suppresses half the features, and is not diagrammatic or symbolical of all the separate parts. Negroes and North American Indians cannot understand profile; they ask what has become of the other eye.
Perhaps Mr. Allen derives his idea of the inability of the Indians to understand profiles from a statement of Catlin, which I have seen used for this and other purposes by different anthropologists until it seems to have become a _favorite fact_.
Turning to Catlin’s _Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians_, (vol. 2, page 2) we find him saying:
After I had painted these, and many more whom I have not time at present to name, I painted the portrait of a celebrated warrior of the Sioux, by the name of Mah-to-chee-ga (the Little Bear), who was unfortunately slain in a few moments after the picture was done by one of his own tribe; and which was very near costing me my life, for having painted a side view of his face, leaving one-half of it out of the picture, which had been the cause of the affray; and supposed by the whole tribe to have been intentionally left out by me, as “good for nothing.” This was the last picture that I painted amongst the Sioux, and the last, undoubtedly, that I shall ever paint in that place. So tremendous and so alarming was the excitement about it that my brushes were instantly put away, and I embarked the next day on the steamer for the sources of the Missouri, and was glad to get underweigh.
Subsequently, Mr. Catlin elaborates this incident into the “Story of the Dog” (vol. 2, page 188 _et seq._).
Now, whatsoever of truth or of fancy there may be in this story, it cannot be used as evidence that the Indians could not understand or interpret profile pictures, for Mr. Catlin himself gives several plates of Indian pictographs exhibiting profile faces. In my cabinet of pictographs I have hundreds of side views made by Indians of the same tribe of which Mr. Catlin was speaking.
It should never be forgotten that accounts of travelers and other persons who write for the sake of making good stories must be used with the utmost caution. Catlin is only one of a thousand such who can be used with safety only by persons so thoroughly acquainted with the subject that they are able to divide facts actually observed from creations of fancy. But Mr. Catlin must not be held responsible for illogical deductions even from his facts. I know not how Mr. Allen arrived at his conclusion, but I do know that pictographs in profile are found among very many, if not all, the tribes of North America.
Now, for another example. Peschel, in _The Races of Man_ (page 151), says:
The transatlantic history of Spain has no case comparable in iniquity to the act of the Portuguese in Brazil, who deposited the clothes of scarlet-fever or small-pox patients on the hunting grounds of the natives, in order to spread the pestilence among them; and of the North Americans, who used strychnine to poison the wells which the Redskins were in the habit of visiting in the deserts of Utah; of the wives of Australian settlers, who, in times of famine, mixed arsenic with the meal which they gave to starving natives.
In a foot-note on the same page, Burton is given as authority for the statement that the people of the United States poisoned the wells of the redskins.
Referring to Burton, in _The City of the Saints_ (page 474), we find him saying:
The Yuta claim, like the Shoshonee, descent from an ancient people that immigrated into their present seats from the Northwest. During the last thirty years they have considerably decreased, according to the mountaineers, and have been demoralized mentally and physically by the emigrants. Formerly they were friendly, now they are often at war with the intruders. As in Australia, arsenic and corrosive sublimate in springs and provisions have diminished their number.
Now, why did Burton make this statement? In the same volume he describes the Mountain Meadow massacre, and gives the story as related by the actors therein. It is well known that the men who were engaged in this affair tried to shield themselves by diligently publishing that it was a massacre by Indians incensed at the travelers because they had poisoned certain springs at which the Indians were wont to obtain their supplies of water. When Mr. Burton was in Salt Lake City he, doubtless, heard these stories.
So the falsehoods of a murderer, told to hide his crime, have gone into history as facts characteristic of the people of the United States in their treatment of the Indians. In the paragraph quoted from Burton some other errors occur. The Utes and Shoshonis do not claim to have descended from an ancient people that immigrated into their present seats from the Northwest. Most of these tribes, perhaps all, have myths of their creation in the very regions now inhabited by them.
Again, these Indians have not been demoralized mentally or physically by the emigrants, but have made great progress toward civilization.
The whole account of the Utes and Shoshonis given in this portion of the book is so mixed with error as to be valueless, and bears intrinsic evidence of having been derived from ignorant frontiersmen.
Turning now to the first volume of Spencer’s _Principles of Sociology_ (page 149), we find him saying:
And thus prepared, we need feel no surprise on being told that the Zuni Indians require “much facial contortion and bodily gesticulation to make their sentences perfectly intelligible;” that the language of the Bushman needs so many signs to eke out its meaning, that “they are unintelligible in the dark;” and that the Arapahos “can hardly converse with one another in the dark.”
When people of different languages meet, especially if they speak languages of different stocks, a means of communication is rapidly established between them, composed partly of signs and partly of oral words, the latter taken from one or both of the languages, but curiously modified so as hardly to be recognized. Such conventional languages are usually called “jargons,” and their existence is rather brief.
When people communicate with each other in this manner, oral speech is greatly assisted by sign-language, and it is true that darkness impedes their communication. The great body of frontiersmen in America who associate more or less with the Indians depend upon jargon methods of communication with them; and so we find that various writers and travelers describe Indian tongues by the characteristics of this jargon speech. Mr. Spencer usually does.
The Zuni and the Arapaho Indians have a language with a complex grammar and copious vocabulary well adapted to the expression of the thoughts incident to their customs and status of culture, and they have no more difficulty in conveying their thoughts with their language by night than Englishmen have in conversing without gaslight. An example from each of three eminent authors has been taken to illustrate the worthlessness of a vast body of anthropologic material to which even the best writers resort.
Anthropology needs trained devotees with philosophic methods and keen observation to study every tribe and nation of the globe almost _de novo_; and from materials thus collected a science may be established.
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_Errors and Inconsistencies: Anthropologic Data_
objective studies of mankind. [_final . missing_] “Story of the Dog” (vol. 2, page 188 _et seq._). [_“et seq” without period_]
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SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION--BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY.
J. W. Powell, Director.
A Further Contribution
to the
STUDY OF THE MORTUARY CUSTOMS
of the
North American Indians.
By
Dr. H. C. YARROW, Act. Asst. Surg., U.S.A.
[Transcriber’s Note (Mortuary Customs):
Much of this article is quoted from other published sources. The resulting inconsistencies in spelling and punctuation are unchanged.
Most footnotes are bibliographic. Asterisks after a few footnote numbers [5.44*] were added by the transcriber to identify those notes that give further information.]
CONTENTS.
List of illustrations 89 Introductory 91 Classification of burial 92 Inhumation 93 Pit burial 93 Grave burial 101 Stone graves or cists 113 Burial in mounds 115 Burial beneath or in cabins, wigwams, or houses 122 Cave burial 126 Embalmment or mummification 130 Urn burial 137 Surface burial 138 Cairn burial 142 Cremation 143 Partial cremation 150 Aerial sepulture 152 Lodge burial 152 Box burial 155 Tree and scaffold burial 158 Partial scaffold burial and ossuaries 168 Superterrene and aerial burial in canoes 171 Aquatic burial 180 Living sepulchers 182 Mourning, sacrifice, feasts, etc. 183 Mourning 183 Sacrifice 187 Feasts 190 Superstition regarding burial feasts 191 Food 192 Dances 192 Songs 194 Games 195 Posts 197 Fires 198 Superstitions 199
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
[In the original, Figure 12 was printed before Figure 11 (both full-page Plates). Figure 45 (_on_ page 196) was printed before the group of plates 34-44 (_between_ pages 196 and 197).]
1.--Quiogozon or dead house 94 2.--Pima burial 98 3.--Towers of silence 105 4.--Towers of silence 106 5.--Alaskan mummies 135 6.--Burial urns 138 7.--Indian cemetery 139 8.--Grave pen 141 9.--Grave pen 141 10.--Tolkotin cremation 145 11.--Eskimo lodge burial 154 12.--Burial houses 154 13.--Innuit grave 156 14.--Ingalik grave 157 15.--Dakota scaffold burial 158 16.--Offering food to the dead 159 17.--Depositing the corpse 160 18.--Tree-burial 161 19.--Chippewa scaffold burial 162 20.--Scarification at burial 164 21.--Australian scaffold burial 166 22.--Preparing the dead 167 23.--Canoe-burial 171 24.--Twana canoe-burial 172 25.--Posts for burial canoes 173 26.--Tent on scaffold 174 27.--House burial 175 28.--House burial 175 29.--Canoe-burial 178 30.--Mourning-cradle 181 31.--Launching the burial cradle 182 32.--Chippewa widow 185 33.--Ghost gamble 195 34.--Figured plum stones 196 35.--Winning throw, No. 1 196 36.--Winning throw, No. 2 196 37.--Winning throw, No. 3 196 38.--Winning throw, No. 4 196 39.--Winning throw, No. 5 196 40.--Winning throw, No. 6 196 41.--Auxiliary throw, No. 1 196 42.--Auxiliary throw, No. 2 196 43.--Auxiliary throw, No. 3 196 44.--Auxiliary throw, No. 4 196 45.--Auxiliary throw, No. 5 196 46.--Burial posts 197 47.--Grave fire 198
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A Further Contribution to the
STUDY OF THE MORTUARY CUSTOMS
of the North American Indians.
By H. C. Yarrow.
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INTRODUCTORY.
In view of the fact that the present paper will doubtless reach many readers who may not, in consequence of the limited edition, have seen the preliminary volume on mortuary customs, it seems expedient to reproduce in great part the prefatory remarks which served as an introduction to that work; for the reasons then urged, for the immediate study of this subject, still exist, and as time flies on become more and more important.