Ills Will Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Boston Library Consortium IVIember Libraries http://www.archive.org/details/transactionsofan02anth TRANSACTIONS ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. PUBLISHED WITH THE CO-OPERATION OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. Volume II. February 7, 1882, to May 15, 1883. WASHINGTON: I^RI^vrTBD F'OR THE SOCIIGTY. 1883. KRAUS REPRINT CO. New York 1971 KRAUS REPRINT CO. A U.S. Division of Kraus-Thomson Organization Limited Printed in U.S.A. HSfTRODUCTOM STATEMENT. The Anthropological Society of Washington was organized Feb- ruary 17, 1879, by the adoption of a constitution substantially the same as that now in force. Its object, as stated in Article II, is to encourage the study of the Natural History of Man, especially with reference to America, including Somatology, Philology, Philoso- phy, Psychology and Technology. Its members are of three classes. Active, Corresponding, and Honorary, all of whom are elected by the Council on nomination in writing by two active members of the Society. Active members pay an initiation, fee of five dollars, which covers the annual dues for the first year ; afterwards the annual dues are three dollars. Regular meetings are held in the Library of the Army Medical Museum on the first and the third Tuesday of each month from November to May inclu- sive, in which papers are read by members of the Society, or others who may be invited by the Council, and topics discussed relating to the various branches of Anthropological science. The publications of the Society prior to the present volume con- sist of a volume of one hundred and fifty pages, entitled "Abstract of Transactions," which covers the period from the organization to January 18, 1881. Subsequently, the Smithsonian Institution having agreed to co5perate in the publication, a pamphlet of one hundred and forty-two pages was issued as Volume I of Transactions of the Anthropological Society of Washirgton, embracing the work of the Society to and including the meeting of January 17, 1882. The Council have believed it more satisfactory, as it is more con- venient, to have succeeding volumes contain the proceedings of each winter's season, and therefore the present issue comes down to May 15, the closing meeting of the season of 1882-83. If this plan be continued, the next volume will cover the period from Novem- iii IV INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT. ber, 1883, to May, 1884. Most of the papers contained in these volumes have been published separately by the Smithsonian Insti- tution, in scientific magazines, or by their authors in pamphlet form. The Society has been recognized by the Treasury Department as entitled to import books for its collection free of duty, and many valuable gifts from European authors have been received, as the lists in the present volume testify. Owing to the illness of the retiring President, his annual address was not completed in time for delivery at any of the meetings of the season of i882-'83. It was therefore reserved for the opening meeting (November 6, 1883,) of the next year, but appears in its proper place at the close of this volume. OFFICERS AND COUNCIL OF THE Anthropological Society of Washington FOR THE YEAR 1883. OFFICERS. PRESIDENT. GARRICK MALLERY. VICE-PRESIDENTS. Section A, Somatology, .... ROBERT FLETCHER. Section B, Sociology J. C. WELLING. Section C, Philology^ Philosophy, and Psychology, J. W. POWELL. Section D, Technology, .... OTIS T. MASON. SECRETARIES. General Secretary, . . . WALTER J. HOFFMAN. Secretary to the Council, . . F. A. SEELY. treasurer. J. HOWARD GORE. curator. C. C. ROYCE. COUNCIL. J. W. POWELL. EDWARD ALLEN FAY. A. F. A. KING. ROBERT FLETCHER. GARRICK MALLERY. G. K. GILBERT. OTIS T. MASON. J. HOWARD GORE. C. C. ROYCE. H. W. HENSHAW. F. A. SEELY. W. J. HOFFMAN. LESTER F. WARD. DAVID HUTCHESON. J. C. WELLING. publication committee. OTIS T. MASON. F. A. SEELY. WALTER J. HOFFMAN. LIST OF MEMBERS OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. Corrected, to Octo"ber lO, 1883. HONORARY MEMBERS. Prof. Demetri Anoutchine, Moscow, Russia. Prof. Spencer F. Baird, Washington, D. C. Prof. Adolf Bastian, Berlin, Prussia. Dr. John Beddoe, Bristol, England. Prof. George Busk, London, England. Prof. G. Capellini, Bologna, Italy. Prof. Emile Cartailhac, Toulouse, France, M. Ernest Chantre, Lyons, France. Prof. C. Engelhardt, Copenhagen, Denmark. Dr. John Evans, London, England. Prof. H. Fischer, Freiburg, Baden. Rev. LORiMER FisojM, Navuloa, Fiji. Prof. William H. Flower, London, England. Prof. Ernest Haeckel, Jena, Germany. Prof. W. His, Leipzig, Germany. Prof. Abel Hovelacque, Paris, France. Prof. Thomas H. Huxley, London, England. Sr. JoAQUiM Garcia Icazbalceta, Mexico, Mexico. Sir John Lubbock, London, England. Prof. Paolo Mantegazza, Florence, Italy. Sir Henry S. Maine, London, England. Dr. Washington Mathews, U. S. A., Fort Wingate, N. Mexico. Dr. A. B. Meyer, Leipzig, Germany. Prof. Gabriel de Mortillet, Paris, France. Prof, M. Much, Vienna, Austria. Prof. Frederick MVller, Vienjia, Austria. VII VIII TRANSACTIONS OF THE Prof. SvEN NiLSSON, Lund, Sweden. Maj. Gen. Pitt-Rivers, London, England. Dr. Samuel Pozzi, Paris, France. Prof. A. DE QuATREFAGES, Paris, France. Prof. GusTAV Retzius, Stockholm, Sweden. Prof. A. IL Sayce, Oxford, England. Dr. Emil Schmidt, Leipzig, Germany. Prof. Waldemar Schmidt, Copenhagen, Denmark. Prof. Japetus Steenstrup, Copenhagen, Denmark. Dr. Paul Topinard, Paris, France. Dr. Edward B. Tylor, Oxford, England. Prof. Rudolph Virchow, Berlin, Prussia. Prof. Carl Vogt, Geneva, Switzerland. Prof. J. J. A. Worsaae, Copenhagen, Denmark. CORRESPONDING MEMBERS. Mr. Moriz Benedikt, Coblenz, Rhine-Prussia. Mr. A. F. Berlin, AUentown, Pennsylvania. Mr. Drake Carter, Versailles, Kentucky. Sr. Alfredo Chavero, Mexico, Mexico. Dr. Arthur Chervin, Paris, France. Mr. G. C. Comfort, Syracuse, New York. Mr. Frank Cowen, Greensburg, Pennsylvania. Prof. W. Boyd Dawkins, Manchester, England. Mr. George Dawson, Montreal, Canada. Dr. Alex. Ecker, Freiburg, Baden. Gen. L. Faidherbe, Paris, France. Dr. R. J. Farquharson, Des Moines, Iowa. M. P. Cazalis de Fondouce, Montpellier, France. Mr, Francis Galton, London, England. Count G. GozzADiNi, Bologna, Italy. Major A. M. Hancock, Churchville, Maryland. Prof. Robert Hartmann, Berlin, Pi-ussia. Rev. Horace Edwin Hayden, Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. Mr. Frederick von Hellwald, Stuttgart, Wiirtemberg. Mr. Alfred W. Howitt, Gippsland, Victoria. Dr. P. R. Hoy, Racine, Wisconsin. Prof. Augustus H. Keane, London, England Hon. J. Warren Keifer, Springfield, Ohio. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. IX Dr. GusTAV Le Bon, Paris, France. Dr. Oscar Loew, Munich, Bavaria. Mr. Henri Martin, Paris, France Prof. Oscar Montelius, Stockholm, Sweden. Dr. John G. Morris, Baltimore, Maryland. Marquis de Nadaillac, Paris, France. Mr. P. W'. Norris, Norris, Michigan. Sr. Don Orozco y Berra, Mexico, Mexico. M. Alphonse Pinart, Panama, United States of Colombia. M. Elisee Reclus, Clarens, Vaux, Switzerland. Mr. H. Rivett-Carnac, Allahabad, India. Rev. Edmund F. Slafter, Boston, Mass. Dr. LuDWiG Stieda, Dorpat, Russia. Mr. O. F. Techmer, Leipzig, Germany. Dr. Alton H. Thompson, Topeka, Kansas. Dr. AURELE de TOrOk, Buda-Pesth, Hungary. Dr. H. Wankel, Blansko, Moravia. Rev. S. J. Whitmee, Dublin, Ireland. Mr. W. C. Whitford, Milton, Wisconsin. Prof. Alex. Winchell, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Dr. Harrison Wright, Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. Count G. Zaborowski, Paris, France. ACTIVE MEMBERS. (Corrected to November 20, 1883.) The following list aims principally to facilitate correspondence with the active members of the Society. It therefore gives the post-office address of each mem- ber, and tne particular form and style in which he prefers to be addressed, add- ing in some cases his particular profession or pursuit. So few members known to have university degrees having expressed a desire to have them printed in the list of members, and some having objected to this being done, it was thought best to omit them in all cases. Washington, D. C, is understood unless otherwise specified. Members are particularly requested to advise the Secretary to the Council of any change of address. Dr. Geo. N. Acker, Demonstrator of Physiology, Nat. Med. College. Dr. A. T. Augusta. Physician, 1319 L street N. W. Dr. Frank Baker, Professor of Anatomy, 366 C street N. W. TRANSACTIONS OF THE Mr. Henry M. Baker, 141 i F street N. W. Prof. Alex. Graham Bell, Scott Circle. Dr. Emil Bessels, 1441 Massachusetts Avenue N. W. Mr. Otis Bigelow, Banker, 605 Seventh street N. W. Gen. Wm. Birney, Attorney, Le Droit Park. Mr. Jas. H. Blodgett, U. S. Census Office. Dr. J. F. Bransford, U. S. Navy. Mr. J. Stanley Brown, 1318 Massacliusetts Avenue N. W. Hon. Horatio C. Burchard, Director of the Mint, U. S. Treasury Dept. Mr. Edson a. Burdick, U. S. Pension Office. Prof. E. S. Burgess, Washington High School, 1214 K street N. W. Dr. Swan M. Burnett, Oculist, 1215 I street N. W. Prof. J. W. Chickering, Jr., National Deaf-Mute College. Mr. Edwin Coombs, Sixth Auditor's Office. Mr. Frank H. Cushinc;, Zufii, New Mexico. Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, Bureau of Ethnology. Mr. Chas. L. Dubois, Banker, 605 Seventh street N. W. Capt. C. E. Dutton, U. S. A., Geological Survey. Mr. Theo. ¥. DwiGHT, Librarian, Department of State. Prof. Edward Allen Fay, National Deaf-Mute College. Dr. Robert Fletcher, Editor of Index Medicus, 1326 L street N.W. Mr. Weston Flint, Librarian, U. S. Patent Office. Prof. E. T. Fristoe, Columbian University. Dr. E. M. Gallaudet, President of the National Deaf-Mute College. Mr. Henry Gannett, U. S. Geological Survey, Le Droit Park. Mr. Albert S. Gatschet, Bureau of Ethnology. Mr. C. D. Gedney, U. S. Coast Survey Office. Mr. G. K. Gilbert, U. S. Geological Survey. Mr. H. P. Godwin, Journalist, Evening Star Office. Mr. G. Brown Goode, Assistant Director U. S. National Museum. Mr. J. King Goodrich, U. S. National Museum. Prof. J. Howard Gore, Columbian University. Dr. Chas. E. Hagxer, Physician, 1400 H street N. W. Dr. Wm. H. Hawkes, Physician, 1105 F street N. W. Mr. H. W. Henshaw, Bureau of Ethnology. Mr. S. D. HiNMAN, Yankton, D. T. Dr. W. J. Hoffman, Bureau of Ethnology. Mr. Wm. H. Holmes, Bureau of Ethnology. Dr. Franklin B. Hough, Chief of Forestry Div., Dept. of Agriculture. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. XI Mr. M. B. W. Hough, 312 Indiana Avenue N. W. Dr. D. L. Huntington, U. S. A., Surgeon General's Office. Mr. David Hutcheson, Assistant, Library of Congress. Mr. Ernest Ingersoll, New Haven, Connecticut. Mr. John Irwin, Jr., City of Mexico, Mexico. Dr. Jos. Taber Johnson, Physician, 937 New York Avenue N. W. Mr. S. H, Kauffman, iooo M street N. W. Mr. George Kennan, Journalist, Lock box 23. Dr. A. F, A. King, Dean of the Nat. Med. Col., 726 13th street N.W. Dr. William Lee, Physician, 2111 Pennsylvania Avenue. Mr. Daniel Leech, Smithsonian Institution. Mr. Joseph Libbey, Merchant, 3043 West street, Georgetown. Capt. E. P. Lull, U. S. N., Navy Department. Judge Arthur MacArthur, Supreme Court D. C, 1201 N street N.W. Rev. Clay MacCauley, Helena, Montana. Mr. Henry B. F. Macfarland, 1727 F street N. W. Col. Garrick Mallery, U. S. A., Bureau of Ethnology. Prof. Otis T. Mason, Columbian University. Mr. J. J. McElhone, Reporter to Congress, 1318 Vermont Avenue. Mr. J. D. McGuire, Ellicott City, Maryland. Prof. A. P. Montague, Columbian University. Dr. James E. Morgan, Physician, 905 E street N. W. Dr. P. J. Murphy, in charge Columbia Hospital. Mr. E. W. Nelson, Colorado Springs, Col. Midshipman Albert Niblack, U. S. N., U. S. National Museum. Mr. J. A. NoRRis, 1236 Thirteenth street N. W. Mr. Ivan Petroff, U. S. Deputy Collector, Kadiak, Alaska. Mr. J. C. Pilling, Chief Clerk, Bureau of Ethnology. Dr. John H. Porter, 2720 M street, Georgetown. Prof. Samuel Porter, National Deaf- Mute College. Maj. J. W. Powell, Director U. S. Geological Survey. Dr. D. Webster Prentiss, Physician, 1224 Ninth street N. W. Mr. S. V. Proudfit, Interior Department, 108 Seventh street N. E. Lieut. W. W. Reisinger, U. S. N., 1209 Thirteenth street, N. W. Mr. John H. Renshawe, U. S. Geological Survey. Dr. Elmer R. Reynolds, U. S. Pension Office. Mr. Wm. J. Rhees, Chief Clerk Smithsonian Institution. Prof. C. V. Riley, Entomologist, U. S. Agricultural Department. Dr. Louis W. Ritchie, Physician, 3259 N street N. W. XII TRANSACTIONS. Mr. Miles Rock, City of Guatemala, Guatemala. Mr. C. C. RoYCE, Bureau of Ethnology, 607 I street N. W." Mr. John Savary, Assistant, Library of Congress. Mr. Newton P. Scudder, Smithsonian Institution. Col. Franklin A. Seely, Examiner, U. S. Patent Office. Dr. R. W. Shufeldt, U. S. A, care Surgeon General. Mr. Chas. W. Smiley, Statistician, U. S. Fish Commission. Mr. John D. Smith, U. S. Pension Office. Mr. Thorvald Solberg, Assistant, Library of Congress. Dr. Z. T. Sowers, Physician, 1324 New York Avenue. Gen. Ellis Spear, Solicitor of Patents, Lock Box i. Dr. J. O. Stanton, Physician, 1344 G street N. W. Mr. James Stevenson, U. S. Geological Survey. Rev. Benjamin Swallow, Washington, D. C. Mr. H. T. Taggart, Assistant I J. S. District Attorney. Prof. William B. Taylor, Smithsonian Institution. Prof. Cyrus Thomas, Bureau of Ethnology. Mr. Henry L. Thomas, Translator, Department of State. Mr. Gilbert Thompson, U. S. Geological Survey. Dr. J. Ford Thompson, Surgeon, 1000 Ninth street N.W. Dr. J. M. Toner, Physician, 615 Louisiana Avenue. Mr. Frederick W. True, Smithsonian Institution. Mr. E. P. ViNiNG, Gen. Freight Dept., U. P. R. R., Omaha, Nebraska, Mr. Lester F. Ward, U. S. Geological Survey. Dr. Charles WarRen, Bureau of Education. Dr. James C. Welling, President of Columbian University. Dr. H. C. Yarrow, U. S. A., 814 Seventeenth street N.W. CONTENTS. Page. Limits of the Innuit Tribes of tlie Pacific Coast. By Ivan Petroff. [No abstract.] 3 The Classification of Objects in the New National Museum in its Relations to Anthropology. By Prof. G. Brown Goode. [Synopsis.] 5 The Treatment of Aborigines by Colonists of Higher Races. By Prof. Otis T. Mason. [Abstract] 8 Tue Gentile System of the lovvas. By Rev. J. Owen Dorsey. [Abstract.] 10 Society as a Domain of Natural Forces. By Lester F. Ward. [No abstract.] 11 Life in Zuiii. By Frank H. Cushing. [Abstract.] 14 The Turning Point of Modern Sociological Science. By Dr. J. C. Well- ing I5 The Carson Foot-prints. By Dr. W. J. FIoffman 34 Anthropology at tiie American Association. By Prof. Otis T. Mason. [No abstract.] 38 Soapstone Quarries and Aboriginal Tools for Working Soapslone. By J. D. McGuire. [Abstract.] 39 Mound Explorations in Southern Illinois. By Prof. Cyrus Thomas. [Abstract.] 39 Tattooing among Civilized People. By Dr. Robert. Fletcher 40 On the Hawaiians. By Capt. C. E. DuTTON. [No abstract.] 68 An Inquiry into the Origin of Invention. By Col. F. A. Seely 70 Aleutian Songs and Traditions. By Ivan Petroff. [Abstract.] 90 The Carson Foot-prints. By G. K. Gilbert. [Abstract.] 91 Art in Shell. By William H. Holmes 94 Cannibalism. By Dr. J. Hamilton PoRTER. [Abstract.] 119 Stone Implements from Ghazipur, India. By H. RiVETT Carnac. [A letter.] 122 Dakotan Legends and Myths. By Rev. J. OwEN Dorsey. [Abstract.] 124 On Sir Rawson Rawson's Deductions. By Dr. Robert Fletcher. [Abstract.] 125 Comparison of Eskimo Pictographs with those of other American Abor- igines. By Dr. W.J. Hoffman 128 Illustrations of Mythology from Slav and Magyar Folk-Lore. By .Mr. Jeremiah Curtin. [Abstract.] 147 The Shetimasha Indians of St. Mary's Parish, Southern Louisiana. By Albert S. Gatschet 148 Mound Distribution in the United States. By Prof. Cyrus Thomas. [Abstract.] 159 The Use of the Cross Symbol by the Ancient Americans. By William H. Holmes i6i Origin of the Sexes. By Dr. Charles E. Hagner. [No Abstract.] 172 Annual Address of the President, Major J. W. Powell. Delivered No- vember 6, 1883 176 XIII TRANSACTIONS. Fiftieth Regular and Fourth Annual Meeting, January 17, 1882. Major J. W. Powell, President, in the Chair. The Chair laid before the Society the following proposed amend- ments to the Constitution which the Council had considered and approved : 1. To refer the election of members to the Council. 2. To increase the entrance fee from two to five dollars, and the annual dues from two to three dollars. 3. To change the classification of Anthropology from that de- fined in Article II of the present Constitution to the following sub- divisions : I, Somatology; 2, Sociology; 3, Philology; 4, Phil- osophy; 5, Psychology; and, 6, Technology. 4. To change the designation and duties of the two Secretaries, i:o that there shall be a General Secretary and a Secretary to the Council, the former to have charge of the transactions of the Society, and the latter of the business of the Council. 5. To require each of the Vice-Presidents to deliver an address annually on some subject belonging to his division of anthropology, and to exempt the President from confining his annual address to the work of the Society during the preceding year. 6. To make the time of holding meetings extend from Novem- ber to May, inclusive, instead of from October to June. The Society then proceeded to consider the .several propositions in the order stated, and they were separately voted upon and adopted without modification. The annual reports of the Treasurer and the Curator were then respectively presented and received. 2 TRANSACTIONS OF THE The Society next proceeded to the election of officers for the ensuing year. The following are the officers elected : President .... J. W. POWELL. [ROBERT FLETCHER. Vice Presidents J J- ^- WELLING. VICE-PRESIDENTS . . . -^ GARRICK MALLERY. [O. T. MASON. General Secretary . . LESTER F. WARD. Secretary to the Council F. A. SEELY. Treasurer .... J. HOWARD GORE. Curator .... W. J. HOFFMAN. fE. A. FAY. Council at Large I MILES ROCK. J A. F. A. KING. I G. K. GILBERT. I S. M. BURNETT. tH. W. HENSHAW, Upon the announcement of the result, the Society at 9.30 ad- journed. Fifty-First Regular Meeting, February 7, 1882. Major J. W. Powell, President, in the Chair. The election of Capt. C. E. Button, U. S. A., as an active member of the Society was announced. ' In accordance with the Constitution the retiring President de- livered his annual address upon The Outlines of Sociology.* Fifty-Second Regular Meeting, February 21, 1882. Dr. Robert Fletcher, Vice-President, in the Chair. The Chair stated that Mr. Petroff, whose communication was the * Printed in Vol. I of Transactions, pp. 106-129. ANTHKOPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. only one on the program for the evening, had notified the Council that, owing to illness, he would not be able to read it, and the Society adjourned at 8.30 p. m. Fifty-Third Regular Meeting, March 7, 1882. Dr. Robert Fletcher, Vice-President, in the Chair. The election of Mr. E. W. Nelson, of the Smithsonian Insti- tution, as an active member of the Society, was announced. Mr. Ivan Petroff then read a paper on the "Limits of the Innuit Tribes on the Pacific Coast."* discussion. Mr. Nelson, who had spent much time in Alaska, spoke of a mixed tribe, or race, intermediate between the Innuit and the Tinne Indians, which he had met while there, and which he thought to be identical with another interior tribe, though modified as to language and customs. He also mentioned an Eskimo tribe, sup- posed lo have immigrated from Northeastern Asia, but which had become much assimilated in language, customs, etc., to the Alaskan Indians. Mr. Gatschet spoke of the Aleuts, and inquired whether any indications existed that they had migrated from Asia. He said there was no such thing as an originally island tribe ; they must have come from some part of the main land. He also com- mented on the derivation of the word Aleut as affording some clue to their origin. Mr. Petroff replied that the words Aleut and Innuit were prob- ably identical in origin, and that he had found Aleuts at Bristol Bay, and that certain characteristic cooking utensils of that tribe had been taken from kitchen refuse on the main land, which proved their former occupation of those parts. Prof. Mason reproduced some of Mr. Ball's arguments to estab- lish the great antiquity of the human occupancy of Alaska. He * rrinted in Am. Nat., XVI, No. 7, 1882, pp. 567-575. 4 TRANSACTIONS OF THE also inquired what had been the effect of the change from Russian to American ownership of the territory. To the latter question Mr. Petrofif replied that under Russian rule the tribes were not allowed to move, but that now there were no restrictrions, although they did not manifest much disposition to migrate. He thought that the population showed no marked tendency either to increase or decrease ; at Cook's Inlet there were only eighteen less persons in 1880 than in 1868, although it was a notoriously unhealthy locality. He apprehended, however, that the recent introduction of intoxicating liquors would soon begm to tell upon the population. Formerly no such beverages were m use except a mild drink made from meal and called kwak, but in 1876, a still was erected by the whites at Cook's Inlet. Mr. Nelson stated that he had noted a marked decrease in the population of certain localities, but that he was inclined to attri- bute this result chiefly to the almost total extermination in those parts of the reindeer. Dr. King asked whether infanticide had been observed among the Indians of Alaska, and also what were the marriage customs. Mr. Petroff replied that he had never seen any traces of infan- ticide. He said that the marriage ceremonies were very simple, and in some tribes scarcely existed at all. The Innuit were nearly all members of the Russian church. Those on Torriac bay were monogamous, and appeared to treat their wives kindly. The natives of Prince William Sound were in the habit of taking wives from them, in most cases simply purchasing them. Wife- lending prevails as a rite of hospilality, and he thought that this custom had done much to mix the blood of the diff'erent tribes. In reply to further questions he stated that the Innuit tribes were sometimes without chiefs, and that each tribe had its totem. Mr. Henry Baker asked whether there was any danger that the United States would ever become involved in war with any of these Indians, and Mr. Petroff explained that, owing to their paucity of number, no serious results need be apprehended. The more west- ern tribes were all peaceable, and only the lower Thlinkits and Kolo- shes were disposed to be hostile; these numbered some 5,000 or 6,000, and, owing to the ease with which they could retreat to British soil if attacked, they might make trouble. The Indians around Cape Prince of Wales had a bad reputation, but the interior ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 5 tribes were too thinly scattered to cause any alarm. The Aleutian Islanders were thoroughly christianized. Fifty-Fourth Regular ^Ieeting, March 21, 1882. Dr. Robert Fletcher, Vice President, in the Chair. Prof. G. Brown Goode, Assistant Director of the National Museum, read a paper on " The Classification of Objects in THE New National Museum in its Relations to Anthro- pology." Hectograph copies of an elaborate synopsis of the classification proposed were distributed to the members. outline of a SCHEME OF MUSEUM CLASSIFICATION.* I. Mankind; 2. The Earth as Man's Abode; 3. Natural Re- sources; 4. The Exploitative Industries; 5. The Elaborative In- dustries ; 6. Ultimate Products and their Utilization ; 7. Social Relations of Mankind ; 8. Intellectual Occupations of Mankind. DISCUSSION. Prof. Mason referred to the fundamental division of objects into those which were actually represented by specimens and those whose nature only admitted of some descriptive illustration, and also commended the proposed innovation of uniting, so far as required for the purpose, the elements of a library with those of a museum as popularly understood. He further pointed out the unavoidable- ness of a certain amount of overlapping in so extensive a classifi- cation, and inquired whether the head " Inorganic Matter," placed under "Natural Resources" in the synopsis, would not more naturally fall under the preceding division "The Earth as Man's Abode," and similarly of "Force." Prof. GooDE replied that under " Inorganic Matter" it was pro- posed to arrange the mineralogical and chemical substances, and under "Force," only such apparatus as are used in illustrating *An analysis of the scheme was printed in the Proceedings United States Na- tional Museum, i88i. Appendix. No. 13. 6 TRANSACTIONS OF THE the nature of force in the abstract, such as the lever, pulley, in- clined plane, etc. Dr. Rock remarked that the overlapping that would occur was no objection and would not necessarily constitute duplication, since each re-appearance of the same substance would present it in a changed form. He instanced the case of silver, which would appear primarily as bullion, then as coin, and then in the various arts, where the crude metal need not be repeated. Dr. Fletcher suggested the value of cards containing cross-refer- ences to the same object in other forms. Prof. Mason thought that it would be well to have the busts of representative men placed alongside of their achievements, as e. g., the bust of Stephenson with the steam engine. Prof. GOODE said that such duplications would be introduced wherever a purpose could be thereby best subserved. He spoke of the department of "Human Achievement," placed at the end of the syllabus, as to some extent theoretical, although it was hoped one day to introduce this feature. In this department would be displayed samples of the mDst finished works in every field of in- dustry and human undertaking, the best productions of the greatest dramatists, poets; sculptors, engravers, painters, etc., and the finest specimens of textile fabrics, glassware, pottery, etc., that had ever been manufactured. Mr. True asked how such a subject as philosophy, for example, could be represented. Prof. GooDE said that this could be done by exhibiting the works of philosophers accompanied by diagrams of their systems. Mr. HuTCHESON spoke of the importance of exhibiting in a sep- arate department the great epoch-making books of all ages. Prof. GooDE further illustrated his scheme by a detailed de- scription of how the origin, progress, and present status of the science of fish-culture might be illustrated in the museum. Dr. Fletcher inquired whether it was intended that visitors should be allowed to use the books thus placed on exhibition. Prof. GooDE replied that this was contemplated to a certain extent and might be accomplished by placing a standard work on each subject on a shelf adjacent to the cases in which the subject is illustrated. Dr. Rock spoke of the general lack of descriptive labels in museums, and thought it would be useful to have a manual, the ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 7 best extant, accompany each special department, as e. g., mine- ralogy. Mr. HuTCHESON mentioned the need of good model guide-books, and named as one of the best of this class the Friedrich' s Bausteine. He also called attention to the place assigned to " religious organ- izations and systems " under the general head " Moral condition of Man," and said he thought it would more naturally fall under " Social Relations." Mr. Ward concurred in this last view, at least in the abstract. He also reverted to Mr. Hutcheson's previous suggestion relative to the exhibition of epochrmaking books, and spoke of the educa- tional effect of such a feature on young persons who might desire to lay out a course of reading and wish to avoid the mass of literature of an ordinary or inferior quality which makes up the bulk of all great libraries. Prof. GooDE said that such a collection would come under the department of '' Human Achievement." He also spoke of the guide- books, the preparation of which is contemplated. Mr. True remarked upon the satisfactory manner in which the proposed system gets rid of mere curiosities. He said that the commonest objects were, from the practical point of view, the most important, and yet they were often evanescent and difficult to ob- tain. Prof. Goode illustrated this by the effort the museum authorities had been obliged to make to obtain a specimen of the planchette. Fifty-Fifth Regular Meeting, April 4, 1882. Colonel Garrick Mallery, Vice-President, in the Chair. The election of Dr. Wm. H. Hawkes, Acting Assistant Surgeon, U. S. A., as an active member of the Society, was announced. The Curator reported the following gifts : From the Author. — Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation; A Study in Anthropology. By Horatio Hale. A paper read at the Cincinnati meeting of the A. A. A. S., in August, 1881, under the title of "A Lawgiver of the Stone Age." Salem, Mass., 1 88 1, pamph., 20 pp. A paper entitled "The Manuscript Troano." By Prof. 8 TRANSACTIONS OF THE Cyrus Thomas. Taken from the American Naturalist for Au- gust, 1881, pp. 625-641. From the Author. — A pamphlet entitled "A preface to, with ex- tracts from, A Book of the Beginnings." By Gerald Massey. 28 pp. Mittheilungen aus der anthropologischen Literatur Amerikas. By Dr. Emil Schmidt. Essen, 20 pp., 4to. From the Publisher. — Military and Naval Advertiser and Book Record. Washington and New York, December, 1881. From the Society. — Memoires de la Societe d'histoire, d'arche- ologie et de litterature de I'arrondissement de Beaune. Deuxi- eme s6rie. No. i. Beaune, France, 1881, 2 parts. From Dr. Oscar Low. — Sitzung der Anthropologischen Gesell- schaft zu Miinchen, vom 16 December. Prof. O. T. Mason then read a paper on " The treatment of Aborigines by Colonists of higher races," of which the follow- ing is an abstract : The author of the paper, believing that several very important questions in anthropology depend upon the knowledge of this sub- ject for a proper solution, attempted to group together a mass of facts gathered from a variety of sources. The various methods of intrusion upon occupied areas were illustrated by examples of ancient and modern colonization, such as the Jews into Palestine, the Phoenicians and Greeks into the seaports of the Mediterranean, and the Romans into their conquered provinces. The two con- quests of England by the Romans and by the Anglo-Saxons and Jutes were adduced to illustrate the effect of yielding or of stubborn resistance. The freshest and best examples were accredited to Sir Bartle Frere, who had studied the subject thoroughly both in British India and in Southern Africa. In the course of the paper the author treated of the wide differ- ence always existing between theories of occupation as held by the home government and the real conduct of the intruders towards the natives ; the effect of changed clothing and environment, of spirit-drinking, of sexual diseases and of epidemics, the changes wrought in the Pariah classes by education, the tendency to destroy the aboriginal peoples, and the best method of establishing a government over the lower class. As history is ever repeating itself, it was held that the careful study of the iTiethods and results of ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 9 various modes of colonization would assist the modern civilized governments in the discharge of their duties towards the aborigines within the territories over which they have extended their sway. DISCUSSION, Col. Mallery pointed out certain analogies between the facts presented, and those which have attended the settlement of America by the whites. Dr. Rock drew the contrast between the effect of European occupation of North and South America, that whereas the amalga- mation of races has been slight in the former it is the rule in the latter. He said that in many parts of South America it was con- sidered an honor to have descended from Indian ancestors, and he thought four-fifths of the people of that continent had Indian blood in their veins ; at least such was the case at Parana and along the Rio Negro. Even those who claimed to be pure CastilianS were rarely wholly pure. Col. Mallery stated that what had been said of North America was not entirely true of Canada. Col. Seely remarked that in the Saxon invasion of England no assimilation of races took place, while invasions and migrations on the Continent of Europe were always accompanied by a mixture of races. He then drew the parallel with respect to the coloni- zation of America. The portions colonized by the English exclu- sively showed no mixture with the aborigines, but the portions colonized wholly or in part by the Latin races showed such mixture. In Canada it was the French and not the English that had amalga- mated, while in Mexico the Spaniards evinced the same readiness to combine with the natives that they did in South America. Mr. Ward pointed out, in support of Col. Seely's statement, the peculiarly isolated position which the United States and Terri- tories occupy in this respect, and maintained that this furnished conclusive proof that it was neither the latitude and resultant climate nor any essential difference between the character of the more northern and more southern tribes of Indians which caused their destruction, but that it was simply due to the different charac- teristics of the colonizing races ; that while the Latin races readily amalgamate with the Indians, the Teutonic races, and particularly the Anglo-Saxon, have a strong aversion to doing so. Prof. Mason thought that the failure of the Anglo-Saxons and 10 TRANSACTIONS OP THE Britons to intermix was largely due to the unwillingness of the latter. Dr. Prentiss said that the product of amalgamation was neces- sarily an inferior race. He gave the views of Bishop Andrews on the Mexican race. The mixed-bloods are now largely in the major- ity. Some of the finest men in the State, such as the late Presi- dent Juarez, are full-blooded Indians, and proud of their pedigree. Col. Seely said the same was true among the Cherokees, who are proud of their pure Indian blood. Prof. Mason said he had been told that the Scotch inhabitants of some of the Southern States had always taken kindly to the In- dians, and that quite a Scotch-Indian stock had resulted. Fifty-Sixth Regular Meeting, May 2, 1882. Colonel Gakrick Maller'y, Vice-President, in the Chair. The Curator reported the receipt of the following gift : From the Editor. — Archivio per I'Antropologia e la Etnologia. By Dr. Paolo Mantegazza. Vol. XI, pt. 3. Florence, 1881, pp. 197-489, 2 pll. Rev. J. Owen Dorsey then read a paper on " The Gentile System of the Iowas," of which the following is an abstract : The Iowas belong to that linguistic stock which has been known as the Dakotan family, but which, in future, must be called the Siouan family. They were mentioned by Marquette, in 1673, ^^d located on his map between 40° and 41° N., west of the "Pana" (Ponkas), and northwest of the " Maha" (Omahas) and "Ototanta" (Otos). Marquette called them "Pahoutet." These four tribes were originally parts of the Hotcaiigara or Winnebagos. Meaning of the word ' ' Iowa ' ' and of their real name, ' ' Paqocte. * ' Origin of the Iowas. Tribal circle. Two phratries ; gentes. Mythical origin of the gentes. Present organization of the tribe. Rights and duties of gentes. Account of their sub-gentes. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. Iowa Tribal Circle. 11 Mr. Lester F. Ward then read a commuaication on '* Society AS A Domain of Natural Forces." The paper was illustrated by elaborate charts prepared for the purpose by Dr. Frank Baker. As the paper consumed the time of the Society up to the hour of adjournment the discussion was postponed. Fifty-Seventh Regular Meeting, May i6, 1882. Major J. W. Powell, President, in the Chair. The election to active membership of Mr. James H. Blodgett, special agent of the Census, and Mr. Edwin Coombs, of the Sixth Auditor's Office, was announced. The President also laid before the Society for its action the project for the formation of an Academy of Sciences, as prepared by the committees of the Anthropological, Philosophical, and Bio- logical Societies in joint session. 12 TRANSACTIONS OP THE The first paper was the conclusion of Mr. Ward's communica- tion, commenced at the previous meeting, on " Society as a Do- main OF Natural Forces." DISCUSSION. Dr. Frank Baker said : I do not rise to make an exhaustive examination of the remark- able paper presented by Prof. Ward ; it is evidently the result of months, perhaps years, of close study, and it would be mere im- pertinence to review a scheme of such magnitude without well weighed consideration. While I will not enter into any proper discussion of the subject, I wish to call attention to the extreme importance of the views presented. If there is any possibility of controlling the forces which actuate society in the sanie manner as the physical forces are controlled, the results which may ensue are simply incalculable. The usual attitude of political economists towards this subject is that of letting the forces entirely alone. They are considered too vast, our means of control too subtle and weak compared with their wide-spread scope and influence. Each individual is considered but a speck, swept onward by the wide-reaching whirl of the stream towards an illimitable and unknown ocean. The aspect of man in this condition is truly a tragic one. From a conception of its infinite pathos comes that strange malady so common to young and intelligent minds, arising mainly durmg this nineteenth century, and which has, by the Germans, been named Weltschmerz, or world-sickness. This strange affection overgrows the young political mind like a blue mould, disabling it from a proper appreciation of its duties. Even the robust and healthy mind of Goethe was tinctured with it. Saint Simon shot himself while under its spell, Matthew Arnold and Carlyle have it, even the clear logical mind of John Stuart Mill was not entirely free from it. One of its most pathetic exponents is none other than Tennyson. His poems, particularly those published some years ago, are interfused with a minor wail of despair at the prospects of humanity. The utmost he can attain to is to say : " We only hope that good shall fall At last — far off — at last, to all, And every winter change to spring. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 13 Robust and muscular science looks with some disdain at weak exhibitions of feeling, but unfortunately that attitude cannot be impressed upon the great body of non-scientific, pseudo-scientific, and semi-scientific members of society. The views of Prof. Ward seem eminently calculated to counteract this green sickness or mental chlorosis. For if we may hope to intelligently direct the social forces without waiting for the far off operation of natural selection, even the least of us may light some small taper which shall not be without effect. If the mental energy of a train-robber, or intellectual activity of a counterfeiter can be turned to the ben- efit of society as we direct the destructive force of steam or wind, it will indeed be a consummation devoutly to be wished. Political economy has been called "the dismal science," and perhaps from an instinctive feeling of this powerlessness of the mind to control economic laws. The impulse which I have to re- lieve a street beggar can be shown to be economically wrong, and if I have no other means of expressing the charitable impulse, it is a positive loss to society. The various schemes of sociological reformers, Comte, Fourier, and others, are attempts to direct such force into proper channels. I think that no one who has ever listened to the enchanting promises of these systems ever entirely forgets them. Fourier's plans of combining all mankind into im- mense associations for mutual advancement, where each individual should follow out the law of his highest attractions, can never en- tirely vanish from the hopes of mankind. The absolute failure of all attempts to realize this golden dream do not necessarily prove that it is unscientific and impossible. Like other human inventions it may fail again and again, and yet be crowned with success at last, should a proper scientific basis be found to work upon ; and it appears to me that, if ever the views of the Utopian school are realized, it must necessarily be by working in accordance with the views formulated by Prof. Ward. President Powell remarked that the doctrine of Malthus was untrue; that' natural selection could not be' considered a law of anthropology; that social organization consisted essentially in a repeal of that law and substituted for the law of competition that of mutual assistance. Man has progressed, i, through the law of mutual protection, and 2, through the law of culture. The three stages of culture are i, acculturation ; 2, education ; 3, investiga- tion. He criticised the terms "Parasitic Occupations," "state- 14 TRANSACTIONS OP THE craft," "priestcraft'" and maintained that all these functions were necessary to the existence of society. To these latter strictures Mr. Ward replied that no stigma was intended to be attached to any of these terms; that the scheme in which they occurred was exclusively economic, and that as these occupations were neither productive or distributive, they had been called parasitic. Neither, their necessity nor their usefulness was questioned, but they were used merely to denote that those thus employed had nothing to do with the production or distribution of wealth. Mr. Frank H. Gushing commenced a paper on "Life in Zuni," but the hour of adjournment arrived before its conclusion. Special Meeting, May 23, 1882. Colonel Garrick Mallery, Vice-President, in the Ghair. At the request of several members of the Society a special meet- ing was held, for the purpose of enabling Mr. Frank H. Gushing to complete the reading of his paper on Life in Zuni. As notice had been given that members might invite their friends there was a large attendance. Mr. Gushing's paper described the topography of Zuni and the mode of life and habits of the tribe more particu- larly as illustrated in the -career of a young warrior of the i6th century, including the initiation rites of several of the Zunian orders into which he had himself been admitted. Characteristic songs and dances were given by members of the tribe, who were present in costume, Mr. Gushing participating. The enthusiasm of the actors in this strange drama was equaled only by the absorbing attention awakened in those who witnessed it. The Zunis were quite as much interested in the customs of their auditors, as the latter were in the dress and ceremonies of the last remnant of the proud Aztec. Many distinguished anthropologists were present, and both by their suggestions and questions aided in drawing from Mr. Gushing and his proteges valuable information concerning Lidian sociology. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 15 Fifty-Eighth Regular Meeting, November 7, 1882. Colonel Garrick Mallery, Vice-Presidentj in the Chair. Vice-President Welling delivered the annual address for the Section of Sociology entitled, the turning-point OF MODERN SOCIOLOGICAL SCIENCE. It is a long way from the " Republic " of Plato to the " Political Institutions" of Herbert Spencer, and yet to the student of soci- ology the separate points of view, respectively occupied by the Greek and by the English philosopher, are clearly within sight of each other. And it is not difficult for the student of history to pass from the standing-place of the one to the standing-place of the other, for the interval between them is bridged with abundant step- ping-stones across the stream of the ages — by the "Politics" of Aristotle, the ''Republic" of Cicero, the " Chntas Dei'' of St. Augustine, the "Monarchia" of Dante, the "Principe" of Machia- velli, the "Republic" of Bodin, the "City of the Sun" of Cam- panella, the "Utopia" of Sii Thomas More, the "Oceana" of Harrington, the "Argenis" of Barclay, the "Leviathan" of Hobbes, and (in that wider treatment of history which looks at civil progress as a branch of universal progress) by the " Scienza Nuova ' ' of Vico, the '■'■ Discou7's sur V Histoire Universelle'''' of Bossuet, the " Ideen'' of Herder, the ''Flan'' of Turgot, with numberless other histories of the progress of civilization by writers like Condorcet, Montes- quieu, Buchez, Guizot, Balmes, Buckle, Draper, Lecky, &c. And the topics discussed by Plato, though so far removed from us in point of time, have often the flavor of this nineteenth century, for as Thomas Arnold loved to remind his students while they con- strued with him the pages of Thucydides, the state of Greece from Pericles to Alexander the Great, fully described to us, as it is, by the works of great contemporary historians, poets, authors, and philoso- phers, affords a political lesson perhaps more applicable to our own times, if taken altogether, than any other period of human history anterior to the eighteenth century. In point of civilization and of sociological evolution that remoter age is much nearer to us than the chronologically nearer ages of Europe from the sixth to the sixteenth century. In Plato's " Republic " we may catch the echo of some among the latest cries of this living age,, for here it is that we find 16 TRANSACTIONS OF THE arguments for the communism of property, for community of pur- suits between men and women, and for the State regulation of marriage, with a view to tha.t supra-" natural " selection which, under the intelligent guidance of reason, has improved the breed of domesti- cated animals. It is common to say that a great progress was made in the civilization of Europe when standing armies came to super- sede the institutes of feudalism and of inter-tribal warfare, but the expediency of such a step was as clearly prognosticated by Plato as by Machiavelli. Alike in the philosophical pages of Plato, and in the satirical comedies of Aristophanes, we may see that there are* few social problems among us which did not find their analogues among the sprightly Greeks of the fourth century before Christ — from the agitation for " woman's rights " to the latest craze for " cheap money." That Plato had no monopoly of social theoriz- ing and political castle-building at that early day, we may abund- antly read in the Ecclesiazusce. and Lysistrata of the great comic dramatist who was his contemporary. But the " Republic ' ' of Plato is at the farthest possible remove from the scientific spirit which is transforming the thought of this modern world, as the method and products of science have already trans- formed the civilization of our age in a thousand different directions. The treatise of the great philosopher is a pure speculation — the speculation, it is true, of a great creative mind, and of a Hellenic philosopher who belonged to the party of the theorists on his specu- lative side, but to the party of reaction against the excesses of de- mocracy on his practical side, insomuch that we find him giving a preference to many features in the institutes of Sparta over the institutes of Athens. In point of scientific value the " Republic " , is, therefore, emptied of all significance, except as a phase of the sociological fantasies in which the ingenious mind of man may in- dulge when it cuts loose from " the solid ground of nature." If Plato had discovered the value of the comparative method as an instrument of inquiry, and as a key to knowledge, there is no trace of the fact in his political visions. His high dialectic proceeds from the intuitions of the philosophical mind and from the aspira- tions of the human soul, as he draws them from his own conscious- ness, and not from any wide generalizations based on the observed facts of human society. This latter was, however, the method of his illustrious pupil and successor, Aristotle, and it was by the skill of Aristotle in the use of this method that he was able to organize ANTHEOPOLOGHCAL SOCIETY. 17 the thought of men for two thousand years, and un^der three diff- erent religious dispensations — the Pagan, the Mohammedan, and the Christian — down to the comparatively recent day when Bacon effected a new " instaurafion " of science by again placing the key of knowledge in the hands of men, and inviting them to its use in the study of nature, after it had been thrown away for centuries by the Schoolmen of the Middle Ages. In his great work entitled iV<>/j.c/j.a, or UoXcTscat UoXsaJ^^, we know that Aristotle analyzed and compared the political constitutions of the then civilized world, em- bracing, it is said, not less than two hundred and fifty distinctive polities, and though this work is lost, we still have the condensed philosophy of his comparative observations in the shape of his well- known work, the noXirua, or Politics. It is evident that Aristotle was a master of scientific method, and he applied it to the phe- nomena of politics according to the best lights that were accessible to him in the time when he wrote. He was as well acquainted with the comparative method of research as with the inductive method proper, for indeed the so-called comparative method is only a phase r.nd variety of the one universal method of reasoning by induc- tion which A.ristotle explains to us in the Posterior Analytics — a phase and a variety as natural and necessary in its application to facts occurring in time as to facts occurring in space. The eminent historian, Mr. Edward A. Freeman, in referring to the comparative method as applied in modern times to the phe- nomena of language, of mythology, of folk-lore, of history, and of politics, has not hesitated to pronounce it ''a discovery" of the present age.* Fully concurring with him in all that he says in praise of this method, I venture to think that there is some inaccuracy in this statement. It is not ''the discovery" of this method which, as he represents, has recently come to " mark a stage in the progress of the human mind at least as great and memorable as the revival of Greek and Latin learning. ' ' The method was discovered more than two thousand years ago, for it certainly was used by Aristotle as freely as by Mr. Freeman or by Mr. Herbert Spencer, but it was used by the Greek philosopher without the perception of a truth which is indispensable to the full usefulness of the method — the fact that all the phenomena of social and political life, wherever we intersect them in the path of our comparative inquiries, are bound to each ♦"Comparative Politics," p. 301. 18 TRANSACTIONS OP THE Other by the law of a genetic evolution, which is logical because it is chronological, and which is universal in its application because the phenomena of civil society, however unlike they may be in different parts of the globe, or in different ages of the world, or in diflferent stages of civilization existing at the same time, are always, and everywhere the outcome of an evolutionary process, which, in the totality of its phases, can be best understood — which, indeed, cannot be scientifically understood at all, until the idea of this law is extended to all the phenomena of human history. Hence, as it seems to me, it is not the " discovery " of the comparative method which is the great contribution of the nineteenth century to the ad- vance of human knowledge — (a contribution which Mr. Freeman thinks may boldly take its stand alongside of the great contribution of the fifteenth) — but the application and use of this method, as fructified by the additional conception that there is and can be no chasm in the succession of the ages, and that the days of the whole human race, like the days of the individual man, are " bound each to each by a natural piety. " It is not until we clearly seize the idea that much the larger part of our social life is that which we lead by virtue of our connection with the race from which we spring, and that all the tribes of men are but parts and parcel of the same human race in different stages of social development, and, therefore, interconnected by a tie of logical congruity, that the in- terpretation of the lowest stages of civilization is seen to be indis- pensable to the proper classification and the rational explanation of all the different polities of mankind, and, therefore, to the rational explanation of that polity which may be the highest at the present day. Instead, then, of saying that "the discovery" of the com- parative method in its application to language, mythology, and history dates from this nineteenth century, we should rather say, I repeat, that it is the scientific application of this method which dates from the present century ; and this scientific application was impossible until the philosophic mind of the race had caught the glimpse of a pregnant truth in the discovery of the continuity of all human history. This philosophical conception dawned on the minds of thoughtful men for the first time in the seventeenth cen- tury, and though the full significance of the conception was not then understood, it helped to light the way of subsequent inquiries to a deeper and wider philosophy of history than had ever entered into the dream of Plato or the scientific reductions of Aristotle. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 19 If , then, I were asked to mark the date when the fruitful applica- tion of the comparative method to politics first became possible, I would refer it to the time of that famous controversy in Europe when the champions of the modern age first dared to dispute with the defenders of antiquity the palm of intellectual supremacy in the matter of acquired knowledge — a controversy known in literary history as the " Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns," * and in the fervent heats of which was struck out many a spark of light like that which still shines in the famous saying of Pascal, that the whole succession of men, as measured along the line of human progress during the course of all the ages of the world, " ought to be considered as one same man, who lives always and who learns continually. " With this conception of universal history the human race may be said to have oriented itself in the person of its file- leaders, for then it was that "world-history," as the Germans call it, may be said to have got its bearings. And it is easy to see how these bearings could not have been discovered sooner. Ancient society was essentially divisive in religion, custom, and polity. National gods hedged off the nations from each other, while local institutes became the badge and bond of a patriotism which was as narrow as it was intense. In the middle ages the sense of conti- nuity between the ages was not only lost, but the violent rupture which the barbarian incursions had wrought in the traditions of the Roman Empire seemed to have inverted the very idea of such a continuity. And for a long time after the Revival of Learning, the thoughts of men were so habitually turned back- ward to the landmarks of Greek and Roman culture that the interposition of these great summit-points of ancient literature, science, and art, could but blind the minds of the Renais- sance generations to the perception of an evolutionary process working in the whole figure of human society and running through all the ages of the world — now on the ascending and now on the descending gradients of universal history. But when this concep- tion was grasped, enlightened men set themselves at once to the *See Perrault : Parall^le des Anciens et des Modernes, en ce qui regarde les Arts et les Sciences. Paris, 1688. The traces of the same controversy may be found in the " Miscellanea " of Sir William Temple, and in the history of the once famous disputation waged by him with Dr. William Wotton and Dr. Richard Bentley, the mocking echo of which we still read in Swift's " Battle of the Books." 20 TRANSACTIONS OF THE writing of ''philosophies of history." Before this date, it is true, St. Augustine had written his great treatise on that " Commonwealth of God " which had come to supersede the Roman Empire, but his purpose in that work was polemical rather than philosophical. Epiphanius before him had discriminated the history of civilization into " Barbarism," extending from Adam to Noah, " Scythism," extending from Noah to Terah, and " Hellenism," extending from the beginnings of idol worship to the bright efflorescence of my- thology in the gay religion of Greece. But all such compendious philosophies as these were not so much reduced from facts as drawn out of their writers' minds. They bore in their whole form and pressure the marks of a subjective purpose. And all applications of the comparative method before this date, even when made by an Aristotle, were necessarily fragmentary, because they were di- vorced from all sense of continuity in the evolution of human societies. While, therefore, the loss of the Nomirna of Aristotle is a loss to literature, it is probably no loss to the science of politics in the modern sense of that phrase, because that sense could not arise until the continuity of human history had been clearly compre- hended, as the condition precedent of inductions wide enough to embrace the whole theory of social evolution, where each stage is anticipatory of the next, and where, therefore, the highest stage must receive some explanation or elucidation from all the stages below it ; because each higher stage of civilization and of social organization is but a normal projection and logical outcome of the next lower stage. It is, then, in this fruitful conception that we may find the turning- pomt of modern sociological science. It is not the comparative method, but this supplementary conception, giving to that method a new vitality and significance, which, as Mr. Freeman says, " has put the languages and the history of the so-called ' classical ' world in their true position;" which has made them " the objects of a worthier because a more reasonable worship ; ' ' which has broken down the middle wall of partition between kindred races and kindred studies ; and which has taught us that " the study of lan- guage is one study and that the study of history is one study. ' ' If, therefore, in all our scientific studies of history we must, as Mr, Freeman holds, "boldly grapple with the great fact of the unity of history ' ' — must start from the great premise that "as man is the same in all ages, the history of man is one in all ages," it follows ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 21 that the possibility of sociological science dates from the epoch when this pregnant truth first rose on the horizon of human knowl- edge. And it arose only in the latter part of the seventeenth cen- tury— emerging at first as a dubious speculation, then accepted as a literary thesis, then as a working hypothesis, until at the present time, with the ancillary theory of evolution, it has become the foundation and corner-stone of sociological science. As a literary thesis and a working hypothesis, it is this conception which has begotten the long line of so-called "Philosophies of History," which date from the Scienza Nuova of Vico and which come down to Draper's " Intellectual Development of Europe." It was to be expected that these ' ' philosophies, ' ' like those of Augustine and of Epiphanius, would often take their shape and color from the shape and color of the author's mind, and hence in the case of most, if not all of them, there is only too much room for the scoff with which Goethe has whistled them down the wind. In writers like Bossuet and Balmes the philosophy of history takes form and complexion from theological opinions. In writers like Schelling and Fichte, Kant and Hegel, the philosophy is made to run along the lines of certain metaphysical preconceptions. In writers like Montesquieu and Turgot, Buckle and Draper, we have, perhaps, a nearer approach to the facts of history as they are, but in them, too, we may easily discern the presence of subjective ideas which sometimes obscure, sometimes discolor, and sometimes dis- tort the philosophical reflections of the writer. The light they let in on the facts of history is light that comes from a prism, or which has been passed through a painted medium,- whereas Bacon has re- minded us that for purposes of exact observation " dry light is best" — the light that suffers least from refraction and dispersion. If such was the turning-point of sociological science, it remains to say that the science of sociology became actual in its rudiments just as soon as men began the comparative study of civil and social institutions on the theory that all the facts of society and of politics are bound into organic unity by the tie of a genetic descent, which is none the less causal and real because we are not everywhere able to discern its presence or explain the mode of its operation. If the science became possible when the unity of history was clearly perceived, the science became actual and began to crystallize in its present shape and configuration when the theory of evolution was made the frame-work on which men conducted their observations 22 TRANSACTIONS OP THE and based their generalizations. For this theory gives us the com- parative method not only as applied to the facts of all human his- tory under a sense of their continuity and interdependence, but as applied to them under the guidance of a principle which affords the basis of accurate classification and precise definition as the indispensable preludes to scientific generalization and rational in- terpretation. Here, at least, the theory of evolution, or if not the theory, a theory of evolution, has absolutely no opponents ; for all the wisdom of political reformers, as well as all the wisdom of poli- tical conservatives, is compelled, consciously or unconsciously, to make its account with the substantial doctrines of the evolutionary hypothesis. The political reformer knows himself to be wise only when, in agitating for social and civil changes, he has found what Canning used to call ' ' the line of safe change, ' ' and when he moves upon it. The political conservative knows himself to be wise only when he avoids the anachronism of clinging to obsolete institutions, and learns to accept in time the new social and civil modifications which are required to meet a new configuration of public opinion, a new aspiration in the sphere of government, or a new evolution in public economy. The history of all political changes, whether they come too soon or come too late, does but serve to point the same moral. In a word, all the hidden mystery of politics con- sidered as the science and art of state-craft, is a mystery hidden in the womb of that genetic evolution which is ever living and work- ing in the figure of human society, and which, according to the elements and forces involved in any given society, or at any given epoch, is seen to work sometimes for the rise and sometimes for the decline and fall of States. And this mystery of practical poli- tics it is the mission of sociological science to bring, step by step, into the clear light of philosophical cognitions based on facts as broad as the phenomena of civilization, and then to colligate these facts into a rational unity by principles of interpretation, which shall give to them the consistency of logical coherence as the basis and stepping-stones of the prevision and prediction which are the sure test of a science. It is because the principle of genetic evolu- tion is radicated in the very structure of society that all social changes, in order to be beneficent, must come with nothing more than the birth-pangs of a natural process. If they come with the violence and shock of a Csesarean operation we must expect that they will mangle, if not destroy, both the old body politic and the ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 23 new embryonic growths with which that body is teeming. This maxim of practical politics is a maxim as old as the art of states- manship, but the whole truth of the maxim lies in the princi- ple which modern sociological science has only recently come to formulate. Indeed, the very figure which I have just used to illus- trate this scientific truth was used nearly three thousand years ago by a Hebrew politician who complained that in his day of political trouble and rebuke " the children were come to the birth, but there was not strength to bring forth," as to-day the politicians of more than one country in Europe take the name of "Oppor- tunists" because they profess to be watching and waiting for that tide in the affairs of men which, when taken at the flood, leads on to fortune in politics as well as in all other enterprises of pith and moment. But the fact and the law of a genetic evolution lie at the "bottom of all political ''opportunism," whether politicians are aware of it or not. If all men are consciously or unconsciously agreed as to the pres- ence of a natural evolution in the formation, growth, and decay of human societies, the expositors of sociological science are as yet far from being agreed as to the way in which this natural evolution works, the manner in which it should be described or the name by which it should be called. As the biologist's ''natural selection," in its effect on the life-history of animals, depends mainly on their isolation and on their individual feebleness in the struggle for exis- tence, while man is everywhere and always "a political animal," to use the phrase of Aristotle, and as such is not simply gregarious, but even in his rudest civil organization makes provision beyond all other animals for the protection of weaker members against the operation of a physical natural selection, it follows, according to Mr. Wallace, that the action of "natural selection" is checked in the sphere of human society.* And not only does man check the operation of " natural selection " by co-operation and the division of labor, but, by the cultivation of plants and the domestication of animals, he substitutes for it, says Mr. Arthur Mitchell, a selection of his own which is above " nature," and contrary to " nature," insomuch that the very theory of civil organization, its procuring •cause as well as its raison d'etre, must be sought in the struggle of *A. R. Wallace : Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, p. 339. London, Macmillan & Co., 1871. 24 TKANSACTIONS OF THE man to defeat the operation of this natural law ; and hence, as Mr. Mitchell holds, "the measure of success which attends the struggle of each band or association so engaged is the measure of the civili- zation it has attained, "f And because the present stage and the actual form of culture in the highest civilizations have been reached by " counteracting and suspending the righteous and salutary law of natural selection," as natural selection acts on lower animals, Mr. W. R. Greg fears that in so doing we are traversing the law which has been ordained by nature "for the preservation of a worthy and improving humanity." And Mr. Herbert Spencer supposes himself to see not the signs of a wholesome progress, but the marks of a pestilent reaction — the very survival of " militarism " — in the present political agitation for sundry schemes of coercive philan- thropy. He refers especially to the schemes of reformers who, not satisfied with State inspection and regulation in mines, factories, ships, lodging-houses, bake-houses, and other domestic establish- ments, even down to our bath-rooms and water-closets, have recently supplemented their propagandism and sanitary dictation by clamor- ing for the enactment of " sumptuary laws " against the use as well as the abuse of any and all intoxicating liquors. All legislation of that kind seems to Mr. Spencer an anachronism — a reaction in the direction of "militarism" — that social state which, planting its roots in the mediaeval feudalism, should be left more and more behind in the progress of modern civilization. This progress, as Mr. Spencer holds, is mainly due to what he calls " industrialism," that is, the state of ''voluntary co-operation which a developed in- dustrial activity necessitates. ' ' Civil coercion and social prevention are, in his idea, the maxims of "militarism." Civil freedom and natural economical selection are, in his idea, the maxims of the later " industrialism." Now, in all this conflict of opinions and jargon of dialects it seems to me that there is nothing more than some confusion of ideas leading to a worse confusion of nomenclature. The law of natural selection works, I conceive, as truly in the figure of human society as in the realm of plants and animals, but it works to ends which are greatly more complex as well as greatly higher in the former than in the latter. In each realm it works according to the genius f Arthur Mitchell : The Past in The Present, p. 325. New York, Harper Bros., 1881. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 25 and quality of the subjects embraced in that realm — the natural selection of the plant world being different in quality from the natural selection of the brute world, and the natural selection of the human world being different in quality from that of both the former which it subordinates to its use. " There are diversities of opera- tion, but the same spirit. ' ' Natural selection in human society tends not only to the evolution of the physical structures which are fittest to survive, but also and pre-eminently, in connection with these, to the evolution of the intellectual and moral formations which are fittest to survive. From man's higher place in nature it is but natu- ral that he should wage war with the natural selections below him, from the control of which he has emerged by virtue of his higher organization, and which he treads upon as the mark and measure of his dominion over the vegetable and animal kingdom. But in working above the lower phases of this natural selection, he works in entire accordance with his own higher nature and with his place in the natural world ; for being endowed with a nature which has intellectual ends through and beyond the physical ends of his being, and moral ends through and beyond the intellectual ends of his being, he does but make a natural selection which accords with his higher nature when he subordinates the lower world to his uses, and, within his own realm, subordinates, under certain limitations, the physical to the intellectual, and the intellectual to the moral. The whole world is the theatre on which man has been enacting this higher natural selection, and all human history is the record of its successive acts and scenes. " There is something curious," says a British thinker, " in a contest between two kinds of strength. The naturalist seeks for the spectacle in the animal world ; the historical eye sees it in the annals of parties and movements."* It would seem, therefore, that the struggle of man for a higher civilization is not so much an attempt on his part to evade the law of natural selection as an attempt to raise that law into the higher planes of an ever-expanding intelligence and an ever-in- creasing morality, where the selection, without ceasing to be gene- tic and natural, tends to become more and more teleological in point both of intellectual and moral purpose. For an ever-expand- ing intelligence man depends on the natural selections, that is, on *J. B. Mozley : Essays Historical and Theological, Vol. I, p. i66, New York, Button & Co., 1878. 26 TRANSACTIONS OF THE the gradually acquired appetencies and aptitudes of his intellect, which, according to the law of its evolution, reads the universe slowly backward from effects to causes and from tendencies to laws of movement ; because the universe, as man finds it, has moved slowly forward to the state of its present cosmical order. Science is genetically retrogressive in its inquiries and discoveries, because nature has been genetically progressive in her operations and products. And hence, the sciences of the world are developed in a fixed genetic order, because the subject-matters of which they treat have been evolved in a fixed genetic order. And as a natural intellectual selection is seen in the orderly and chronological growth of the sciences, so also a natural moral selection is seen in the orderly and chronological growth of the public virtues which have refined the manners and improved the customs of civilized men in this nineteenth century. Natural selection works here to the evolu- tion of clearer moral ideas based on the discovery of the customs which are fittest to survive because they best subserve the purposes of social utility and most clearly conform to the intuitions of the human reason. . This growth, like the growth of science, is a gene- tic evolution. Moral changes in society do not take Y>^dice per saltum. Private morality in its best estate is a slow growth, because of the weakness in which it begins and of the temptations by which it is surrounded in the struggle for existence. Public morality in its best estate is a still slower growth, because of the weakness in which it begins, and because of the greater difficulty with which moral ideas are integrated in the collective consciousness of a whole community. But as without some morality a society cannot exist, there is a needs-be that the law of a natural moral selection should be perpetually present (however invisible and unconscious the mode of its operation) in those differentiations by which the moral sense and practices of one age or land are distinguished from the moral sense and practices of another age and land. Where public customs grow wiser and better and purer, it is under the law of a genetic moral process that they slowly unfold themselves in the sphere of society ; and where they decline, it is from the reciprocal interac- tion of the same inner and outer factors, bringing about a lower moral equilibrium between the selective forces of virtue and the aggregate mass of ideas and interests against which they work and which work against them. And in the light of these principles we can see why it is and how it is that free institutions are always and ANTHEOPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 27 everywhere the slow, gradual, and genetic outcome of a secular pro- cess, under which civil and political regulations have been trans- ferred, by a natural moral and intellectual selection, from the sway of subjective customs and ideas rooted in political ancestor-worship, to the sway of objective rules of civil right and political expediency, capable of being substantiated to the intelligence and morality of the living age which accepts them. And in the light of these prin- ciples we can see why it is and how it is that sometimes an old civilization, like that of China, may seem to be comparatively stationary. It is because the intelligence of the people in its high- est aspirations never aims to rise above the standards of a fixed scholastic system, furnished to the Chinese by a few classics, and because the morality of the people in its highest ideals never con- ceives of anything better than the ethics of ancestor-worship, as formulated for the Chinese by Confucius. "The Chinese civiliza- tion," says Hartmann, "is the product of a culture which has been stagnating for thousands of years, and which has been outlived even to utter tediousness. " In the competitions which regulate the modus vivendi of nations, each nation must keep pace with the natural selections of an advanc- ing intelligence if it does not wish to be pushed to the wall; and each advance in civilization, considered on its intellectual side, de- pends on the number, intelligence, and industry of the workers who, released from the necessity of laboring with their hands for their daily bread, are paid by society or by the State to work with their brains for the public welfare. It is in such a community that a natural intellectual selection works to the discovery of an ever- growing science as the basis and condition of an ever-growing social amelioration. And hence it is that in the light of these same principles I refuse to take any share in the panic fears of Mr. Greg when he argues that modern society by its excessive altruism — by the provision it makes for the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the halt, the maimed, the insane, the improvident, and the thriftless, is in danger of degrad- ing the human species by doing violence to the law of natural selec- tion in the physical sphere. All observation teaches us that nature is everywhere and always more careful of the type than of the indi- vidual, and it is only to the individual that this public charity ex- tends. Moreover, the high public morality which pleases its sense of duty by extending this benevolence to individuals is always 28 TRANSACTIONS OP THE accompanied with the high intelligence which, by an improved medical science and an increased attention to the methods and principles of public sanitation, looks to the improvement of the physical health of the masses at large. When sanitary and medical science shall have reached the stage of a complete prophylaxis aga.inst all preventable diseases, we shall have reached the state of an ideal commonwealth in the matter of the conditions which pre- cede a vigorous physical manhood — a state in which the disturbing influences cited by Mr. Greg will vanish out of sight. And it is a curious fact, as serving to show how subjective these fears of Mr. Greg are, that while he complams because we take too much care of the feeble individual, and will not " let the poor, the incapable, the lazy, and the diseased die," Mr. Spencer complains that we are in danger of taking too much care of the public health, by extending to society the principle of prevention — a principle which, to his fancy, symbolizes with the old "militarism" — whereas the cause of social progress demands, as he thinks, that we should give extension only to the principle proper to the industrial type, which looks not to the prevention oi injuries, but to the providing of quick and costless remedies for the injuries, minor as well as major, which citizens inflict on one another in a state of freedom. But, in fact, this public prophylaxis is not " militarism," as Mr. Spencer supposes. It is "industrialism" organizing and arming it- self, that, by division of labor for purposes of self-protection, it may encounter the least possible hindrance in its operations. The sinks and water-closets of our city are inspected, not to give the citizen a taste of "militarism," but to insure for every citizen the greatest possible freedom from loss in the prosecution of his industry. The small-pox patient is removed from his home and isolated in the wards of the small-pox hospital, not that the precincts of one home may be invaded by the public doctor, but that the precincts of the fewest possible homes may be invaded by the pestilence that walks in darkness and the destruction that wastes at noon day. It is really an alert and intensified "industrialism" which seeks these guards in the public administration ; and as the efficacy of these guards depends on the intelligence and honesty of public officials, we see how their institution reacts on the politics of a people, by tending to the creation of an amended civil service as part and par- cel of the general social amelioration. And this explains why it is that political questions which, in the first stages of natural selection, ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY, 29 are constitutional, tend to revolve more and more in the sphere of administration after a polity has been definitely ascertained and settled by the organic law of the State. It is because an immense and a partly invisible natural selection, involving a vast complex of physical, intellectual, and moral forces, is perpetually going on in society, that no age is able fully to under- stand itself or to construe itself in the scheme of human progress. Natural selection in both the vegetable and animal realms works to the evolution of certain fixed results under the pressure of forces which are immanent without being realized, and which, therefore, move to their predestined ends without conscious aid or direction from the totality of the subject-masses within which and for which they act. The higher natural selection which now goes on in the sphere of society has, in a large measure, this same mark of uncon- sciousness, notwithstanding the infinitely greater degree in which man, as compared with the brute, is able to construe his relation to his fellows and to the world around, below, and above him. But it is the aim of sociological science to bring the collective con- sciousness of the race within the sphere of knowledge, not only for purposes of curiosity, but for the purposes of practical statesman- ship. And if the time should ever come when ithe collective con- sciousness of a nation shall be brought within the sphere of knowl- edge, not only for the ends of theoretical science, but also for the ends of practical utility in politics, that fact would not put an end to natural selection. It would simply raise natural selection to the high plane in which the unconscious selections of a short-sighted ignorance and a self-destroying vice would be swallowed up by the conscious selections of a far-sighted intelligence and a conservative morality. Nor would such a natural selection cease to be genetic because it had become intelligently and intelligibly teleological in its whole drift and purpose. All the tentative efforts of a natural social selection are the dim strivings of man towards this perfect teleology. We ought to be able to see as clearly in the light of a constructive science as Shakespeare saw in the light of his con- • structive imagination, that — " Nature is made better by no mean But Nature makes that mean : so, o'er that art Which you say adds to nature, is an art That Nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry A gentler scion to the wildest stock, 30 TRANSACTIONS OF THE And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race ; this is an art Wtiich does mend Nature, change it rather, but The art itself is Nature. ^^ So true is it, as Sir Thomas Browne has philosophized, that "all things are artificial, for Nature is the art of God." It is because of the genetic evolution and the unconscious teleo- logy which now go on in the figure of society that many social and political questions which are too large and too complex to be settled by the heads of the State, are often seen to get themselves settled in a highly organized society by what is called " the logic of events,'^ that is, by an unconscious natural selection which compels a given solution ; just as in political economy the immense and invisible natural selection of supply and demand works to an equilibrimn which, though wrought without any consciously directive intelli- gence, is wiser and better than would be that of any superintending head in the present state of political knowledge. I am aware that Mr. Galton supposes himself to discry a sign of weakness rather than a promise of progress, in the fact that our pub- lic wants are higher than the public intelligence and morality. He fears that the foremost laborers who have created modern civiliza- tion are beginning to show themselves incapable of keeping pace with their own work. "The needs of civilization, communication,, and culture, call," he exclaims, "for more brains and mental stamina than the average of our race possess." "We are in crying want," he adds, "for a greater fund of ability in all stations of life; for neither the classes of statesmen, philosophers, artisans, nor laborers are up to the modern complexity of their several pro- fessions. ' ' * But instead of seeing in this fact a sign that the British race is "over-weighted," and is likely to be "drudged into degene- racy," how much more scientific and philosophical it would be to see in it the indispensable stimulus, and, therefore, the hopeful promise and pledge of social progress under all these heads. It is only in stationary civilizations that there is no call for " more brains and stamina ' ' than the average statesman and artisan possess. It is because of the moral and intellectual quickening inspired by the very demand which is so distressing to Mr. Galton that " fifty * Francis Galton: Hereditary Genius, p. 345. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 187 1. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 31 years of Europe ' ' have come to be better than "a cycle of Cathay. ' ' I have thus adverted to a few of the difficult and weighty ques- tions which may be said to take their hopes of solution from that great turning-point in sociological science which was reached in the seventeenth century, when men came to perceive for the first time the unity of human history, and when the collective story of man was gathered for the first time into crude generalizations as wide as the observed facts of the race. Standing as we still do on the mere threshold of that science, I am well aware that the purple visions of the "hurrying philanthropist" have no place in the sober fore- cast of the anthropologist ; but just as little place is there for the pessimism and despondency in which a few eminent thinkers here and there seem disposed to indulge in the name of science. All such dogmatism is as little justified by what we know as by what we do not know. DISCUSSION. Prof. Mason said that he was reminded of Gustav Klemm's views of anthropological study, and the tendency to treat every subject broadly and comparatively, and not ex parte, or as some- thing requiring to be defended. Language was now so studied, and even religion as a fact in society was coming to be regarded as a science. He spoke of the tendency of those who furnish the facts for the anthropologist to give them a subjective coloring, and of the necessity of taking this fact into account in collating them, and said that it would yet be seen that anthropology must make its corrections for the "personal equation" of the observer as much as astronomy now does. He dwelt upon the need of taking ac- count of the internal as well as of the external factors, and empha- sized the fact that there is a subjective as well as an objective en- vironment; that the organism co-operates with the surrounding medium in determining the product. From this point of view life is not a war against nature, but merely the interaction of internal and external forces. Mr. Ward commented upon the views of Herbert Spencer, Mr. Greg, and other authors referred to by Dr. Welling, that the humanitarian and philanthropic enterprises of civilized nations were counteracting the salutary tendencies of natural selection and weakening the powers of the race to cope with its environment. He said that the views of this school had always surprised him, held as 32 TEANSACTIONS OF THE they are by the best reasoners of the age. He considered these altruistic undertakings of modern society as a simple continuation of the process of subduing hostile agencies in nature, in which pro- cess alone civilization consists. The present inhabitants of this latitude and climate could not exist here a single year without arti- ficial aids. All the world outside the tropics would be uninhabi- table for such an animal as man if he lacked the power to defend and protect himself by artificial devices. But for hostile agencies that prematurely destroy the greater part of all creatures that are born any species would soon overrun the whole globe. Man has done this solely through the control of such agencies. The neces- sity for charitable institutions arises from the fact that such agencies still continue to be so far unsubjected that a large part of those born would succumb to them for anything which it is in their power to do. Charity means that those who, through social inequalities, have acquired more influence over adverse agencies than they per- sonally need shall exercise that influence in protecting those who have acquired less. This enables these latter to withstand them just as clothing, shelter, &c., enable mankind in general to do so. The same reasoning, therefore, which would do away with benevo- lent institutions would, if logically carried out, do away with every form of protection that man has ever devised either to prevent the consequences of hostile influences, or to increase the effect of natu- rally friendly ones in nature. The result of such would be not to remand the race to the condition of savages, but to remand it to that of other animals with the normally circumscribed habits. All this he said was so exceedingly potent to him that it had always been a matter of the greatest astonishment that the views referred to could have been maintained by any rational being, and especially by some of the really deepest thinkers of our time. He could only account for it as a fact from the undue influence which the con- tinued study of natural processes exerts in leading to the belief that they are the only legitimate processes, and that their results must be in some way superior to those of artificial processes. In many scientific minds this admiration for natural methods amounts to a sort of " nature- worship," or physiolatry, which he had sometimes imagined might be a "survival" of this form of religion among savages. It was, he said, easy to show that this belief in the supe- riority of the methods of nature was not only false, but the exact reverse of the truth, the genetic process being the very least econom- ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 33 ical of all processes. Yet, like all preconceptions, such a belief has the effect to blind the best minds to the plainest truths. Colonel Mallery mentioned the coincidence that, in a discus- sion on a trip to Fortress Monroe in the spring of 1881, between Major Powell, President of the Society, Rev. Clay MacCauley, one of its members, and himself, he expressed the result of civilization to be the successful struggle against the law of the survival of the fittest, which view, on returning to Washington, he found presented in nearly the same words by one of the writers quoted by Dr. Welling and published in an English periodical then just received. Fifty-Ninth Regular Meeting, November 21, 1882. Colonel Garrick Mallery, Vice-President, in the Chair. The Chair announced that the committee, appointed to confer with similar committees of the Philosophical and Biological Socie- ties relative to the proposed federation of the three societies, had reported to the Council that at the last meeting of the Joint Com- mittee a resolution was adopted declaring that it had been impos- sible to report any plan that would be acceptable to the three socie- ties, and that the Joint Committee had adjourned sine die. The election of Messrs. John Greene Mills, and John Savary, as active members of the Society, and of Dr. Harrison Wright, as corresponding member, was announced. The Curator announced that he had received on behalf of the Society the following documents : From the Author. — A biographical sketch of Capt. Oliver Brown, an officer of the revolutionary army, who commanded the party which destroyed the statue of George the Third in New York city, July 9, 1776. By Rev. Horace Edwin Hayden. Privately printed. Wilkes-Barre, Pa., 1882, 8vo., 22 pp. From the Society. — Un agent politique de Charles-Quint, Le bourguignon Claude Bouton, Seigneur de Corberon. * * Par M. E. Beauvois. * * Publication de la Soc. d'Hist. de Beaune, Paris. 1882, i2mo., 229 pp. From the Institute. — Third Ann. Rep. Archccological Inst, of America, at Boston. 1882, 56 pp., 8vo. From the Library Company. — Bulletin Library Co. of Phila., July, New Series, No. 9, 8vo., pp. 76. 3 34 TRANSACTIONS OF THE From Isaac St. Goar. — Antiquarischer Katalog, No. 53. Frank- furt-am-Main. 1882. From Dr. Oscar Low. — Correspondenz-Blatt der deutschen Ge- sellschaft fiir Anth., Eth. u. Urg. July, 1882. From the Publisher. — The National Scientific Journal, Chicago. Vol. 2, Numbers 1-8, 10. DISCUSSION. The discussion of the address of Vice-President Welling was continued from the last meeting. Dr. Welling stated that he regarded social processes as consti- tuting a modified form of natural selection ; that the results brought about by social agencies are due to the interaction of a variety of different influences, no one of which could alone accomplish them ; that it is out of this conflicting mass of social activities and in- terests that the good effects come which we call social progress. He said it was on this view that he explained the common saying that every people has the government it deserves. However low a race may be, the influences, internal and external, acting upon it will necessarily give it the form of government which it is capable of maintaining and which it requires for its own protection. He stated that it was some such train of thought as this that he had intended to follow out in concluding his address, which was acci- dently interrupted, and that he would take occasion to complete it before publication. Dr. W. J. Hoffman made some remarks on "The Carson Footprints," which he illustrated with plaster casts of the origi- nals and with drawings. THE CARSON FOOTPRINTS. Having occasion to visit the western part of Nevada, a short time since, for the purpose of prosecuting ethnologic investigation among the Washoe Indians living in the immediate vicinity of Carson, my attention was called to the recently discovered foot- prints in the State prison quarry. Before describing these, it may be well, however, to refer to their geologic position. One and a half miles east of Carson, in the southeastern portion of Eagle valley, is situated a low sandstone hillock, forming the northern extremity of a low range of hills which project from the Pine Nut Mountains in the south. Upon the northern slope of ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY.^ dO this hillock is situated the prison, approximately in latitude 39° 9' north and longitude 119° 44' west, at an altitude of nearly 5,000 feet above sea level. The prison yard is formed by the natural floor of sandstone, which has been exposed by quarrying, leaving a natural vertical wall around three sides of the square, varying from fifteen feet in height on the eastern side to thirty-two feet on the western. One reason of this difference in altitude is accounted for from the fact of the dip of the ledge toward the west. When the quarry was first opened at the original site, a short dis- tance west of the present excavation, large numbers of mammalian bones were unearthed and carried away by people who chanced to visit the locality out of curiosity. During the past summer, how- ever, the attention of the warden was directed to curious depres- sions upon various portions of the floor of the prison yard, which, upon inspection, appeared to resemble the footprints of a "gigantic human being ' ' so greatly that greater care was exercised in the re- moval of stone, so as to preserve as carefully as possible any new exposures for the purpose of investigation. This portion of Nevada was, at a not remote period of geologic time, covered by a system of lakes, and these are generally believed to have been contemporaneous with the glacial period of the Sierra Nevada, and, therefore, of the Quaternary age. If we exclude the consideration of palaeontological evidence, this particular formation appears to be Tertiary, which supposition is in harmony with the suggestions of Professors Cope and Marsh, who refer the mamma- lian remains to the Upper Pliocene. The formation consists' of several strata of fine grayish compact sandstone, one above the other, each having a thickness of from two to five feet, between which are seams of arenaceous shale and clay. In various localities in the compact strata are the remains of branches and roots, some of which are readily removed from the cavities containing them, the branches especially having decreased in caliber before silicification had taken place. Between the strata, near the upper surface of the formation, bones of various kinds have been discovered almost daily, which were found to be those of deer {Cervtis). tusks and teeth of the elephant, "prohdihly Elephqs primigenius, and teeth, in excellent pres- ervation, of Equus major. The fresh-water shells discovered have been pronounced to be those of the Atiodo/ita, and one gasteropod was also noticed, evidently Physa. 36 TRANSACTIONS OF THE At the time of my visit the prison floor contained an area of about one and a half acres, and was almost rectangular in form. Upon this floor were the impressions of the hoofs of the horse, deer, and a wading bird of the order of Grallatores, numerous tracks of the wolf, possibly Canis occidentalis, and of the elephant. The most interesting impressions, over one hundred in number, were distributed over the eastern, southern, and southwestern por- tions of the yard, and very strikingly simulated those made by a human being upon soft soil The entire number of tracks were divisible into six series, and presented impressions of at least two individuals, one being much younger or smaller than the other. The tracks appear to have been made in a layer of sediment of several inches in depth, which cov- ered the harder sandstone immediately below. In each instance there is a ridge all around the indentation, made by the pressure of the foot, varying from one to two and one-half inches in height. This ridge appears to be only partially solidified mud, and is still flaky, and easily broken in recently uncovered impressions. In the southeastern corner of the yard are a number of confused tracks of the same species, which had been made in deeper mud, the impressions of some exceeding six inches in depth, the heel, in several instances, being deeper than the anterior portion of the foot, as if the individual had struggled or attempted to drag a burden. All of the footprints are clearly rights and lefts, and deviate from the median line at an angle corresponding to those made by a man. The foot-marks measure nineteen inches in length, about six inches across the broadest part of the heel, and seven inches at the base of the toes. The hollow under the instep is remarkably promi- nent and characteristic of the human foot, as is also the curvature around the front of the toes. In other words, the impression appears exactly like that made by an Indian's moccasin if pressed upon a layer of thick mud. No separate indications of toes are visible, and in many of the tracks there is a shallow ridge extending around the edge of the sole as if the foot had been encased in a sandal. In several of the tracks the rounded depressions of the heel, and the ball of the great toe are also visible. The presence of the well defined line corresponding to the cut edge of a piece of hide as a sole gave rise ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 37 to numerous speculations with reference to the question of Tertiary man. The immense size of the tracks is the first objection to any theory to be entertained with respect to man. To meet this objec- tion, an individual was found on the Pacific coast — a Sonoran, if I mistake not^the sole of whose shoe measured eighteen and one" half inches in length, just half an inch less than the largest fossil footprints. Tracings of this foot were exhibited by scientific gen- tlemen in San Francisco, and I am compelled to admit, that in general outline the proportions corresponded closely to those at Carson. Another objection relates to the length of stride, straddle, etc. With respect to the former, the distance from heel to heel of the same side averages about four feet and four inches, varying in the regular series of strides from a minimum of three feet ten inches to a maximum of four feet ten inches. With respect to the straddle, or distance between rights and lefts, there is a variation of from almost nothing to sixteen inches. I found upon the inner surface of several of the posterior ridges, at places corresponding to the back of the heel, fine lines or grooves intersecting one another irregularly, which presented every appearance of having been produced by bristles upon the animal's foot. These creases had not been artificially produced by cleaning the dirt from the footprints, and they were present in several dis- tinct localities. No remains of human beings have been found, neither are there any traces of worked implements or weapons, or anything of what- ever character which might bear the slightest evidence of human workmanship. The footprints are perfectly flat and squarely set upon the rock ; even is this the case where the tracks are deepest and where they were apparently not forced deep enough to strike the substratum of harder formation, as is apparently in all the other impressions. In localities which would have favored the slightest indication of claws no such indications are visible. The layer of mud was of that consistence to receive sharp impressions and to retain them, as is shown in the bird tracks upon which the delicate ridges remain perfect, corresponding to the creases under the claws. The wolf tracks, as well as those of the elephant, also plainly record the form of the ball of the foot and the toes. That these impressions were made by an Edentate is almost 38 TRANSACTICWS^S OP THE beyond doubt. A peculiarity in walking, which consists in throw- ing the weight upon the outer edge of the sole of the foot, survives in the living species of sloths, and it is more than probable that the same was characteristic of the ancient representatives of the genus. A foot of the size indicated by these impressions, would naturally sink to a considerable distance in soft soil, but if arrested by coming in contact with a hard sub-stratum would natu- rally flatten out the sole, and cause a flat surface upon that sub- stratum. In raising the foot plastic material, such as the present formation appears to have been, would ordinarily adhere to the sole, as many indications of this are visible. The edge around the sides of the foot marking the beginning of the coat of bristles or hair, would 3,lso become matted with mud and show a depressed crease, and may perhaps be shown in what was considered the edge of the sole of a sandal. The bristle marks indicated in parts of the inner rim of the footprint would warrant this suggestion. Con- sidering the peculiarity of walking upon the outer portion of the sole of the foot, a rounded elevation would naturally be produced as if there existed a high instep. T'his elevation is very pronounced in every impression, and clearly points out the characteristic im- pression of the sloth. Thus far no remains of any of the Edentata have Deen discovered though it is probable that such will be unearthed. The casts which I prepared at Carson were taken from the most typical impressions by employing plaster of Paris. The tracks were carefully oiled and a very thin solution of plaster poured over them embracing the ridges, the whole being guarded by first erecting ridges of sand to prevent the plaster from running beyond the proper limits. Casts were also made showing the presence of bristles on the back of the heels, though these were not so satisfactory. More desirable materials for this work could not be obtained at Carson. Considerable discussion followed, which was participated in by Messrs. Bigelow^ Mfison, King, Gilbert, Gatschet, and Hoffman. Prof. Otis T. Mason read a paper entitled "Anthropology at THE American Association."^ The discussion of this paper was confined to Prof. Mason's * Smithsonian An. Rep., 1881, and Naturalist, Sept., 1882. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 39 scheme of terminology, and was participated in by Dr. Fletcher, Messrs. Gatschet and Ward and Prof. Mason. Sixtieth Regular Meeting, December 5th, 1882. Dr. Robert Fletcher, Vice-President, in the Chair. Mr. J. D. McGuiRE, of Ellicott city, read a paper on "Soap- stone Quarries and Aboriginal Tools for Working Soap- stone." The speaker alluded to Paul Schumacher and others who have written upon the subject, correcting some of their errors, especially those that intimate the use of metal. Mr. McGuire has found in the quarries the very implements of stone with which the mineral was worked. A resume of the principal quarries known was given, with the observation that we know more of the lake-dwellings of Switzerland than of interesting relic? lying at our very doors. No perfect vessels have ever been discovered. The process of detach- ing and finishing the vessels consisted of several distinct steps : i. Pecking a solid block from the quarry; 2. Shaping the outside by -bold chopping ; 3. Excavation by pecking. The tools are rude, but eminently adapted to their work. The pits are not deep, and are now filled with the debris of centuries. The vessels vary greatly in size, outline, thickness, handles, &c. The tools are of black granite, and seldom of quartz, which latter Mr. McGuire thinks unfit for the purpose. The tools are picks, mauls, axes, adzes, and celts. The discussion was participated in by Messrs. Hoffman, Rey- nolds, and Mason. Prof. Cyrus Thomas presented a communication on " Mound Explorations in Southern Illinois." He referred to an enclosure and mounds in Union county, in the southern part of Illinois, on the Mississippi river. Prof. Thomas examined one of the mounds and found it to contain layers of burned clay and sand, and in the centre large masses of charcoal. Further researches were made in Alexander county in an atelier, or place for the working of flint. Quarries are in the neighborhood, and an interesting group of slab graves in a mound, arranged in 40 TRANSACTIONS OF THE three consecutive tiers. A ditch was cut through the mound, and thirty to forty graves unearthed, containing fifty skeletons and many implements of wood, bone, stone, and copper. After the descrip- tive portion of his paper Prof. Thomas went on to draw his de- ductions from his explorations, comparing them with similar ones made by Professor Putnam, near Nashville, Tennessee. The distribution of the stone graves was for the first time accu- rately given, showing the practice to have been very limited in area.' Prof. Thomas drew attention to the agreement of distribu- tion in these graves with that of the Shawnees. In closing Prof. Thomas said he was of the opinion that the stone graves show decided marks of European influence. Mr. Reynolds recited his experiences in the Shenandoah Valley, especially with reference to stone graves and the Shawnee Indians. Remarks were also made by Colonel Seely, Mr. McGuire, and Mr. Holmes. Sixty-First Regular Meeting, December 19, 1882. Colonel Garrick Mallery, Vice-President, in the Chair. Dr. Robert Fletcher, Vice-President of the Section of Soma- tology, delivered the annual address for the Section, choosing for his subject " Tattooing among Civilized People." The address was illustrated by a great number of photographs and drawings. tattooing among civilized people. The custom of tattooing presents itself from two points of view: the medico-legal and the anthropological. It is with the latter, mainly, that we have to do to-night. The title of this paper will have indicated that a study of tattoo- ing among savage tribes is not included in its scope. Travelers have described and artists have illustrated the intricate patterns which adorn or disfigure the bodies of the natives of Polynesia or Africa; and the mummied heads of New Zealanders, exhibiting elaborate ornamentation of a high degree of excellence, are com- mon in our museums. If such work be compared with the tattoo- ing of civilized life, the superiority, from an artistic point of view, is generally with the former. The designs which the sailor, the ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 41 soldier, and, above all, the criminal, has imprinted on his person, are trivial or offensive in subject and clumsy in execution. Although the practice of the art is so ancient that we have evi- dence of its existence in prehistoric times, and that the earliest chronicles of our race contain many references to it, yet the term itself is comparatively modern. It is derived from a Polynesian, word, tattau, pronounced tdttahou. Captain Cook, who first intro- duced the term, printed it tattow, making a dissyllable of it, and this erroneous pronunciation has followed the word into nearly every modern language. It is well to begin with a definition of what is meant by tattoo- ing, and the following, as laid down by Berchon, is guarded and precise : "Tattooing is that strange and very ancient custom which consists in the introduction under the cutaneous epidermis, at dif- ferent depths, of coloring matter, in order to produce some design which will be of very long duration, though it is not absolutely indelible." The author quoted, Berchon, was a medical officer of the French navy, who made several reports to his Government on tattooing among sailors and criminals, and, in 1869, published an important book, entitled "Histoire medicale du tatouage."^ He has assem- bled an amazing number of extracts from classical writers and from the early fathers, illustrative of the universality as well as the great antiquity of the custom. He begins with a quotation from Leviti- cus, chapter XIV, which, in the English version, reads thus: "Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you." Dom Calmet, in commenting upon this passage, says that the Hebrew literally means "a writing of spots." Time will not permit of our following the industrious author's researches, but it is indisputable that, in all ages and almost among all peoples, tattooing has been employed to symbolize love, friend- ship or sentiment, as an ornament, or as a brand of servitude. An ingenious and spirituel application of the process is related by a prolific writer, the Greek physician .^tius. He tells us that two monks who had reproached the Emperor Theophilus with being an iconoclast were imprisoned by his orders and eleven iambic verses of a satirical character were tattooed upon their foreheads. The methods or processes of tattooing do not differ greatly. In 1 Histoire m6dicale du tatouage, par Ernest Berchon. Paris, 1869. 8vo. 182 pp. 42 TRANSACTIONS OF THE civilized life it is performed with ordinary needles, from three to five being either tied together or inserted firmly in a cork or wooden handle. The points are dipped in the coloring matter at each insertion, the skin is made tense as in vaccination, and the needles are generally made to enter at a right angle. The design is often drawn upon the skin beforehand either with a pen or pencil. Sometimes the pattern is pricked out on paper, which is laid on the skin, and finely powdered charcoal being poured over it the desired outline is obtained in that manner. Some tattooers have blocks with needles inserted so as to produce the desired figure at one impression, but this is too painful an operation to be generally endured. In the caverns of Aurignac, Lartef* found some instruments of reindeer horn and of bone, which, from their shape, size, and fine points, led him to believe that they, were tattooing implements. In ancient Egyptian tombs similarly-shaped instruments, but of iron as well as of bone, have been discovered, and, from their ap- pearing in pictorial representations also, have been clearly deter- mined to have been used for the purpose named. In Oceanica, at the present time, though needles are easily obtained by the natives, they still employ fish bones, and thorns from plants. Some tribes also make use of a small hammer, generally a stone, by a tap of which the instrument is driven in. Tattooing by incision is also practiced, and in Africa the acrid juice of plants is applied to the skin in regular patterns, so as to produce a raised cicatrix. The coloring matter made use of is Indian ink, charcoal, lampblack, soot, vermilion, red lead, cinnabar, turmeric, gamboge, and, in Polynesia, the powder obtained by burning the nuts of the Aleurites triloba. At the meeting in Algiers, in 1881, of the French Association for the Advancement of Science, Magitot, well known for his eth- nographical researches, exhibited a chart showing the geographical distribution of tattooing according to methods. His division was as follows : I . Tattooing by pricking, the needle being passed straight into the skin at different depths. This method prevailed in the Poly- nesian Archipelago, excepting New Zealand ; in the Marquesas Isles, excepting Rapa, Laivavai; in Easter Island and Micronesia; "^ Annales des sciences naturelles. Zoologie. 4^^ sect. T. xvi. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 43 New Guinea ; the Papuan groups, and the Dayall group at Borneo. In South America, the Charruas, the tribes of El gran Chaco of Brazil, the Guaranis, the Pampeans, and the Patagonians. In North America, the redskins. In Africa, the Kabyles, the Arabs, the Egyptians, the Nyam-Nyams, the Senegambians, and the tribes on the banks of the Senegal. In Asia, the Sengli of the isle of Hainan, the Ching-hun ancient races of Corea, the Baitos and the Ouen-chin of Japan, the Koussilis, the Aleutians, the natives of Formosa, the ancient Annamites, and the Ouen-mien-Po, a barba- rous people of the southwest of China. 2. Tattooing by simple incision. Practiced in Melanesia, by African tribes at Loango, Makounde, Mangandja, Machinja, on the east and south banks of Lake Tanganyika, in Guinea, and in New Zealaud. 3. Tattooing by ulceration or burning. Practiced by the Huns of Attila ; and in Tasmania, Australia, Guiana, by the New Guinea tribes of Papuans, the Mincopies, the Negritos, the Alfouras ; in New Caledonia, in the Soudan, in Mozambique, and in Zululand. 4. Hypodermic tattooing, (This consists in passing a needle charged with coloring matter, generally soot, between the epidermis and the true skin in a slanting direction.) Practiced by the Esqui- maux, the Tchouktchis, the Greenlanders, and to some extent in Italy. 5. Mixed tattooing. Throughout Europe the combination of pricking and the hypodermic method is employed. In New Zealand, and among some African and Algerian tribes, the process by incision and by pricking are both used. In the Marquesas isles the method by pricking and by ulceration are combined in some cases. This ethnic distribution by methods is so curious and original that, although not immediately a part of our subject, it needs no apology for its introduction. A few words must be said upon the question of the indebility of tattoo-marks, although its interest is principally from the medico- legal side, and it is in that connection that numerous experiments have been made. Caspar, of Berlin, was among the first to inves- tigate the subject, and the result of his inquiries was that in thirty- seven cases he found six in which the marks had completely disap- peared, while in one case, in which fifty-four years had passed, the design was still perfectly visible. Some time later Hutin, in 44 TRANSACTIONS OF THE France, examining invalid soldiers found 506, out of 3,000, who declared themselves to have been tattooed. A careful examination produced this result : Very apparent after the lapse of from 4 to 65 years 342 Partly effaced after the lapse of from 10 to 64 years 117 Completely effaced after the lapse of from 28 to 60 years 47 Total 506 Tardieu made some examinations at the hospital La Riboisiere; of 92 designs or inscriptions, he found : 57 were very appai^ent. 21 were partly effaced. 14 had entirely disappeared. It is not the lapse of time, however, which causes the disappear- ance of the marks, but the slight depth of the pricking or incision^ the nature of the coloring matter, and the frequent friction on the skin which some trades necessitate. If the tattooing be quite super- ficial, penetrating the epidermis only, it is no unusual thing for it to disappear entirely in a short time. Vermilion and the vegetable blues are much less enduring than black, so that a part of a design is often preserved when the rest of it is entirely gone. Thus, of a soldier; there may be nothing left but helmet, sword, coat, and boots, the face and other parts having faded out completely. Of all colors employed, Indian ink is the most permanent, and if with that pigment, or with charcoal, the punctures have reached the corium, or true skin, the design is almost certain to be indelible. Next to the blacks, indigo is the most staying color. Tattoo marks may be removed by artificial means though they have wonderful power of resistance. Horteloup mentions a case where a red-hot bar of iron fell on a tattooed arm and obliterated a portion of a ship, but even then, with a lens, the white lines completing the rigging could be made out. The application of caustics or of repeated vesication is partially successful, but the resource of the criminal whose tattooed marks have been registered while he was in prison is to alter the pattern by additional tattooing. This can be readily done : an eagle can be changed to a female figure, or an anchor to a serpent. Bertillon records it as the result of his experi- ence that " the cicatrices of tattooing may always be augmented but cannot be diminished." ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 45 Some changes of the kind have been closely observed. A horse- shoer who had become a blacksmith adroitly altered a horse-shoe into a forge, adding two figures beating iron upon it. A butcher, changing his occupation, converted a bull's head into an expanded rose. A baker had inscribed the name ''Adele" upon his arm, and when in due course of time she proved faithless, he converted the letters into the well-known cocked hat of Napoleon. The artifice has the sanction of antiquity. Athenseus relates in book XII of his Deipnosophists that the wives of the Scythians, exulting over the capture of a number of Thracian women, so marked them with points that they had the appearance of being painted. Some years later, the victims of this outrage stained the remaining surface of their bodies in the same manner so as to pre- sent the appearance of intentional adornment, and thus did away with the recollection of the stigma. In the famous Tichborne case the absence of tattooed marks which should have been present formed one of the strongest points against the prisoner. At the age of 1 7 Roger Tichborne had three symbols tattooed upon his arm ; namely, a cross, an anchor, and a heart, indicating Faith, Hope, and Charity. His friend, Lord Bellew, frequently saw these marks, and, himself, tattooed with Indian ink the initials R. C. T., in letters half an inch long, on Tichborne's arm, above the symbols. On the same occasion, with the same needles and ink, Tichborne tattooed an anchor on Lord Bellew's arm. This remained perfectly distinct 25 years later when it was exhibited to the jury. No evidence of tattooing was dis- coverable on the arm of "the claimant," and he had admitted that he never was tattooed. Where large bodies of men are thrown together, with much idle time, it is among them that we should expect to find a custom like tattooing most prevalent. Accordingly, it is soldiers, sailors, and, above all, criminals, including prostitutes, who most extensively resort to it. As regards soldiers and sailors, the love of imitation and a desire t# emulate the adornments of their veteran comrades are doubtless the chief motives for the practice. The designs most in vogue with them are such as relate to the glories of their profession, and flags, cannon, ships, patriotic symbols, and amorous devices form the stock in trade of the artist in the barracks or on shipboard. The criminal classes furnish the most elaborate and the most 46 TRANSACTIONS OF THE curious examples of tattooing. Of late years the study of the criminal from a psychological point of view has been pursued with remarkable results by certain observers. Their investigations have been especially directed to the peculiarities of the brain, and although the study is yet in its infancy it may be predicted that the relations of crime to abnormal conditions of the brain, whether congenital or acquired, will form an important part of the ever expanding science of craniology. Among the most distinguished of these observers is the professor of medical jurisprudence at Turin, Cesar Lombroso. He is the editor, in conjunction with Garofalo, of a journal entitled, " Ar- chivio di psichiatria,"^ the full title of which, translated, is "Archives of disorders of the mind, penal science, and criminal anthropology, to aid in the study of insane and criminal man." But his most important work is "L'Uomo deliquente"* — "The criminal man in relation to anthropology, jurisprudence, and prison discipline," a work of 740 pages, published in 1878. A chapter in this ex- tremely interesting book is devoted to the subject of tattooing, and from it, and from subsequent papers of Lombroso and others in the journal referred to, are condensed some of the facts and statistics about to be presented to you. Another writer, whose researches it will be convenient to com- pare with those of Lombroso, is Dr. A. Lacassagne, a French army surgeon and the professor of medical jurisprudence at the Faculty of Medicine at Lyons. He published, last year, a volume of 116 pages, entitled " Les tatouages, etude anthropologique et medico- legal. "^ Lombroso's observations were made on 6,784 subjects, of whom rather more than half were soldiers and the remainder criminals, prostitutes, and military prisoners. Of tattooed soldiers, the larger portion were from Lombardy and Piedmont, men of Keltic origin. Dr. Lacassagne' s observations were made in Algeria. There are three battalions in the French army known as les battaillons d'Af- rique. They are composed of men who have been condemned for desertion, theft, insubordination, and other offenses. At the expv- ^ Archivio di psichiatria, scienze penali ed antropologia -criminale, etc. Torino. * L'Uomo deliquente in rapporto all' antropologia, giurisprudenza e alle disci- pline carcerarie. Torino. 1878. 8vo. 6 Paris. 1 88 1. 8vo. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 47 ration of his sentence the offender is sent to one of these battalions to serve out the time he owes to the state. Dr. Lacassagne went to work very systematically to obtain copies of the tattooing which many of these men exhibited. He laid a piece of tracing-cloth upon the skin and with a pencil copied the design. The cloth, when laid upon white paper, made the drawing appear very clearly, and with red, blue, or black ink, according to the original, he went over tl>e pencil lines. The tracing was finally pasted on a sheet of card-board, on the back of which he wrote the particulars of the. case to the number of 20. These details included the name, age, place of birth, and occupation of the subject ; the date of the tat- tooing, its locality, any change which had taken place in it, the method employed, the coloring matter made use of, and so forth. In this way, he obtained 1,333 transcripts of tattooing, taken from 378 persons. The variety and number of designs is especially characteristic of prisoners. It may be laid down as a rule that the more inveterate the criminal the more extensively will he be tattooed. As regards the region of the body chosen for the operation, Lombroso found the palmar surface of the fore-arm to be most frequently selected. A few were tattooed on the shoulders; some, generally sailors, on the breast. Miners are often tattooed on the fingers, the design being in the shape of a ring. He found no instance of tattooing on the back or on the genitals, except in men who had been in the South Seas, or who were old convicts. Lacassagne gives the following table showing the parts of the body operated upon in his 378 subjects : Upon both arms and upon the abdomen i the abdomen alone 4 the arms and thighs 6 the l)reast alone 8 the penis 11 the whole body 29 both arms and upon the breast 45 the left arm only 59 the right arm only 88 both arms 127 378 Of the designs covering the whole body, one consisted of the complete uniform of a general, another of the complete uniform of 48 TRANSACTIONS OF THE an admiral. Two instances were met with of tattooing on the face. In one, 7nartyr de la liberie, and a serpent, had been drawn on the forehead ; in the other, the prophetic words le bagne m' attend — the galleys await me. The part of the body selected has often a special relation to the character of the design. Upon the abdomen, below the umbilicus, the emblems or inscriptions were mostly erotic or obscene. In all the eleven cases of tattooing on the penis, a boot, sometimes with a spur on it, was the emblem adopted, and the men acknowledged that the object was to admit of a frightful play upon words, untrans- latable, and too vile to be repeated. The breast is reserved for large compositions, portraits, and even verses. On the back are sometimes seen some very extensive pieces of tattooing. Lacassagne describes a portrait of the Admiral Jean Bart, which was 37 c. long by ■t^'t^ c. wide. A Joan of Arc, 41 c. by 39 c. An Abd-el-Kader, 30 c. by 30 c. Upon the buttocks, obscene designs were mostly found, a com- mon one being a serpent in numerous folds with the head directed to the anus. In another instance, a large eye was drawn on each buttock. In another, two zouaves crossing bayonets and support- ing a scroll inscribed on n' entre pas. A portrait of Bismarck or of a Prussian soldier was not unusual, the locality indicating a patriotic contempt for the enemies of France. Sailors who have visited many countries furnish, in some instances, by the marks on their bodies, a chronology of their career ; a certain tree indicates a tropical country ; a certain color, some particular island ; tattooing by incisions, instead of pricking, indicates a visit to New Zealand or to some parts of Africa. Berchon had seen more than 50 men completely covered with designs. Several sailors had a squadron of vessels on the back with the waves of the sea spread over the buttocks. In addition, their chests, arms, and legs were also covered with designs. One sailor carried upon his body the certificates of his constant rebellion against authority. Deser- tions in all parts of the world had furnished him opportunities to procure almost every fashion of tattooing, and he was covered with a bewildering mass of inscriptions and designs. Among the for- mer was a complete warrant as master-at-arms written in full sized letters across his abdomen. It is not always at long intervals that the body is covered with ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 49 the tattooer's work. In 1859 a soldier, who was being treated for rheumatism in the hospital at Rochefort, nearly fell a victim to his taste for this species of adornment. In July he began with a ring on his middle finger. In August, at one sitting, which lasted three hours and a half, he had a rose and a female bust tattooed on his right fore-arm and a pansy and a bust of his general on the left fore-arm. Shortly after, he had the bust of a Spanish brigand tattooed upon the upper part of his right arm. In the beginning of October he had a final sitting. The artist tattooed upon the upper part of his left arm a figure of Liberty in the Phrygian cap, with a banner in one hand and a drawn sword in the other. Upon his chest were drawn two naked female figures, united by a long garland of flowers, while above them was a winged Cupid, a!rmed with bow and arrows, and also surrounded by a wreath. This alle- gorical group — which was very skilfully drawn in black and red — was intended to symbolize ''conjugal love." Four days later the man entered the surgical ward of the hospital with a grievously inflamed arm ; gangrene followed, and amputation at the shoulder- joint became requisite to save the« life of the too sesthetic soldier. Before leaving the subject of the parts of the body chosen for tattooing the statistics may be given of some American cases. In 1877 a tramp named Kelly traveled about the country, chiefly through Pennsylvania, making a business of tattooing. He was saturated with syphilis, and had what are termed mucous patches in his mouth. In performing his operation he moistened the needles and the colors with his saliva, and the consequence was that- he inoculated a great many men with syphilis. Dr. F. J. Maury® gives the details of 22 of the cases which came under his care. The location of the tattooing in 19 of them was as follows : On the chest I shoulder I hand , I forearm 16 The next division of our subject relates to the character of the designs imprinted by tattooing. Lombroso divides them into four classes : emblems of love, of religion, of war, of profession. Lacassagne gives the following « Amer. Jour. Med. Sciences. Philad., 1878, N. S. Jxxv, pp. 44-62, 4 50 TRANSACTIONS OF THE details of the 1,333 tracings obtained by him from the battaillon d'Afrique : Patriotic and religious emblems 91 Professional emblems 98 Inscriptions III Military emblems , 149' Metaphorical emblems . 26a Amorous and erotic emblems 280 Fantastic, historical, and miscellaneous 344 1.333 Religious designs are more frequent among Italians and Span- iards than among Frenchmen. They consist, for the most part, of a cross surmounting a globe ; a heart surrounded with wax tapers > a crucifix ; the portrait of a patron saint, or a skull. These designs- have generally been produced before the commencement of mili- tary life. Many Italians have been tattooed at Loretta. Around this famous shrine are seen professional tattooers, marcatori, who charge from half to three-quarters of a lire for producing a design com- memorative of the pilgrim's visit to the shrine of our lady of Loretto. A like profitable industry is pursued at Jerusalem. Amorcns and erotic emblems form, as might be anticipated, a. large part of the tattooer's work. Among -them are found the name or initials of a mistress, the date of a first love affair, a heart pierced by an arrow and dropping blood, female faces and figures of all varieties, and obscenities which beggar description. Professional emblems which relate to trades and professions are very numerous, and are frequently of importance in identifying criminals. Inscriptions are favorite subjects of tattooing. They consist of sentences, proverbs, dates, sentiments ; and among criminals fre- quently of expressions of anger, vengeance, hatred of the law, and defiance of society. The following specimens, translated from various languages, will give a fair idea of their general character : "Death to false women," "Vengeance," "The child of pleasure," "Honor to arms," "Lives alone, for friends are dead," " Hurrah for France and fried potatoes!" "Death to tyrants," "Life is a deception," "Death to French officers." In several instances was found the famous reply of Brennus, but in French, ' ' Malheur aux vaincus. ' ' ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 51 The propensity of criminals to tattoo sentences of a lugubrious or self-condemnatory character upon their bodies is very remarkable, and furnishes a curious psychological study. The sentence Ne sous mauvaise Hoile — born under an evil star — was tattooed upon the arm of Philippe the strangler of prostitutes, and aided in his con- viction. One of his intended victims related at his trial how she had one evening taken a man to her room, but becoming alarmed at his savage looks and at the tattooing on his arm, she contrived to. make her escape. It was not the ill-augury of the sentiment of the inscription which frightened her so much as the belief that it indicated an escaped convict. She identified him by face and by tattooing. During the period from 1864 to 1866 over a dozen murders of prostitutes living in their own apartments were com- mitted by this man. The guillotine duly fulfilled the ominous inscription upon his arm. A Venetian convict bore upon his breast these words : misero me, como dovrb finire ! — wretch that I am, how shall I end ! Fieschi, before his attempted regicide, had been con- demned for forgery and deprived of his cross of the legion of honor. While in prison, he tattooed the cross upon his breast, with an inscription implying that this one could not be taken from him. Lacassagne three times found the following sentence: "The past has deceived me, the present torments me, the future horrifies me.'' Other inscriptions of this character are: "The child of misfor- tune," "No luck," "No chance," "The child of misery born under an evil star," "The galleys await me." Among Italian or Corsican convicts the vendetta sometimes figures in the designs tattooed upon them, and an oath of ven- geance has more than once been found inscribed on the breast of a man condemned for the fulfillment of his vow. Lombroso gives the representation of a Piedmontese who had been a sailor, a robber, and finally a murderer for vendetta. On his right breast was the inscription " Giuro di vendicarmt " — I swear to be avenged — with two daggers crossed above and two banners also crossed beneath. A serpent was on the shoulder with its head regarding the inscrip- tion. Other designs, not connected with his oath of vengeance, were observed upon him, namely, a serpent, a lion, a female figure, a ship, the name " Maria," and the initials R. P. on his left arm. On the dorsum of the penis were the arms of Savoy and on the gland was tattooed a female face, the meatus forming the mouth ! 52 TRAJSrSACTIONS OF THE Another instance is recorded in a recent journal.^ A criminal who had several tattoo marks upon his arm, fearful of their leading to his identification, so disfigured them with needles as to make them unrecognizable. Shortly after, in a struggle with gendarmes who were arresting him, he received a blow on the head which destroyed one of his eyes. Discarding all thoughts of prudence, he tattooed upon his right arm a vase with the fatal date 1868, and a vow that he would live for 100,000 years to be revenged on the gendarme. He kept the vow and killed the man, the tattooing helping to condemn him. Beside the inscription of savage vows of vengeance, the Italians make use of tattooing for the purpose of recognition of member- ship in their secret societies. Lombroso found hieroglyphics and letters on convicts, the meaning of which they obstinately refused to divulge. He is of opinion that the Carbonari were tattooed with an especial mark upon initiation into their dangerous associa- tion. You remember how skillfully a modern novelist has made use of this custom in the discomfiture, by its discovery, of that delightful villain Count Fosco, and how the avenger effaced the mark from his arm, after his assassination, and inscribed with his dagger the word " traditore " — or traitor — in its place. A redoubtable convict, Malassene, a man of herculean strength and size, was covered with inscriptions and designs. On his chest was a guillotine in black and red, with this legend beneath it in red letters, " I began ill, I shall end ill. It is the fate which awaits me." Among metaphorical emblems are found stars, the star of happi- ness, the star of misfortune, anchors representing hope, hearts pierced, hands with fingers interlaced indicating friendship, etc. The pansy is the most popular of flowers, being the symbol of remembrance. Of 97 flowers in Lacassagne's collection 89 were pansies. Among fanciful emblems may be named lions, serpents, tigers, dogs, cocks, goats, gazelles, vases, a revolver, the wheel of fortune, and a chamber pot. Mythological personages are seldom met with, being confined to Bacchus, Venus, Cupid, or Apollo. In five instances the portrait was found of D'Artagnan of *'Les trois mousquetaires," showing the impression produced on the po|)ular mind by that inimitable romance. ^ Archivio di psichiatria. Torino. 1882. III. 156. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY 53 The designs produced by the tramp Kelly were quite well drawn, some of them being really elegant. He had a book of patterns from which his customers could select. As very few observations have been made of American tattooing, it will be interesting to quote the descriptions given by Dr. Maury of the 22 men who came under his care in consequence of this syphilitic tattooing. One man had a large crucifixion on his chest ; another had a star of 8 rays on his shoulder; another, a star of 10 rays on the hand. On the fore-arms was the greatest variety of designs : a bracelet around each wrist, a crucifixion, a shield with 3 dark and 2 light bars, a dancing-girl on an eagle holding a flag in her hand, an eagle with a scroll surmounted by a crown and 2 letters, a goddess of liberty seated on an eagle bearing the American flag, a figure 2 on which rests a ladder, a naked woman kneeling on a pedestal under a dense weeping willow, and, in several instances, a dancing-girl described as "with crossed ankles," a copy, probably, of the well-known "dancing girl reposing" of Canova. Probably the most elaborate and extensive tattooing ever seen in Europe or America is that displayed on the person of the Greek, Georgius Constantine. In 187 1, this man was exhibited to the class by Hebra, the famous professor of diseases of the skin, at Vienna, and an account of him was given in the Wiener medicinishe Wochenschrift for 1872.* In the atlas to Hebra's great work on dermatology there is an engraving of the head and bust of this man. The story told by Constantine was that he was an Albanian by birth, and that, taking part in the French expedition to Cochin China, he was taken prisoner in Burmah, and with three others was sentenced to be tattooed. One man died under the opera- tion and another became blind. The work upon his body, he says, took three months in the performance. The man's story is, in many respects, incredible ; and he seemed desirous of repre- senting himself as a very desperate character. Beside his native language, Greek, he spoke five or six other languages with varying degrees of fluency. However it was acquired, there is no doubt that the man has been tattooed in the highest style of Burmese art. When exhibited by Hebra, he was about 40 years of age, handsome, and strongly 8 Vol. XXII, pp. 39-43. 54 TRANSACTIONS OF THE built. From the crown of his head to the points of his toes his skin is entirely covered with figures in dark blue, with occasional intervening designs in red. The interstices between his fingers are covered with small characters in blue and red. Prof. Max Miiller says the writing on his hands is Burmese and that the man speaks Arabic and Persian fluently. The blue designs are even seen among his hairs. The only portions of his body not tattooed are the under side of the penis, the scrotum, and the soles of his feet. The total number of figures upon him is 388, which are distributed as follows : On forehead 2 neck and throat 8 breast 5° back 37 abdomen and buttocks . 52 dorsum of penis I left arm 51 right arm . 50 lower extremities 137 388 The figures are symmetrically arranged on the two sides of the body. On the breast are two crowned sphynxes, two serpents, two elephants, two swans, and in the middle a horned owl. Among other figures are apes, leopards, tigers, cats, eagles, storks, peacocks, men and women, lions, panthers, crocodiles, salamanders, dragons, fishes, gazelles, fruit, leaves, flowers, and various other objects. The man exhibited himself in various countries of Europe, and more recently was traveling in this country with Barnum. It is not always that the great showman's curiosities are so well authenti- cated. Burmese tattooing has been long known to travelers- as wonder- fully artistic in design and admirable in execution. Such work as that just described is very costly. An English officer named Chambers paid ;^4o for a similar piece of work on himself, in which the head was left untouched. One thing that tends to throw discredit on the story of this Greek is the fact that in Burmah criminals are coarsely tattooed across the breast with a sentence declaring their offense. The executioners and jailers have in addi- tion a ring tattooed upon each cheek, and they are known as Pah- ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 55 quet, ring-cheeked, a term of singular reproach, and detested even by themselves.® It seems most probable that Constantine paid for having this elaborate work performed, and invented the story to give himself a fictitious importance. The newspapers have recently given an account of a young woman in New York city who is undergoing the process of tattooing over nearly the whole body, avowedly to obtain a living by the exhibition. I am indebted to an American writer, J. W. Palmer, who traveled in the Burman Empire in 1856, for the following account of the adornment of a young noble :*" "The tattooing of young Ingaboo was laid on by a master's hand. It was high art even in Burmah where artists in lampblack and fish- galls are held in the highest esteem and extensively fostered by the state. * * * An inch or two above his navel young Ingaboo was encircled with fabulous birds, impossible birds — these were done in vermilion, thirteen birds, and every bird standing on a monkey's head. Thus thirteen blue monkeys girded him round about, just where \{\%pu^sho was tucked under at the waistband. A small crimson serpent was coiled about his navel, half within and half without — a cunning device, so expertly done that the little creature seemed just emerging from the hollow. The thirteen blue monkeys grinned on the backs of thirteen blue hogs of Bassien with blushing tails ; and after that all were blue and blending one into the other." In Japan tattooing is mostly confined to the lower classes. They are generally adorned on the shoulders, arms, and thighs, with such figures as are seen on their porcelain. Cinnabar and Indian ink are the pigments employed. The thief who has stolen property not exceeding 60 bus in value has a circle tattooed upon his arm. Upon a second offense a man so marked is decapitated. Some tables have been made of the age at which tattooing is performed. The following from Lacassagne shows the numbers and ages under 21 : ^ Personal narrative of two years' imprisonment in Burmah, by Henry Gouger, London, i860. 12°. p. 144. ^"The Golden Dagon, or up and down the Irrawaddi, being passages of ad- venture in the Burman Empire, by an American, J. W. Palmer. New York, 1856, 12°, p. 187. 56 TRANSACTIONS OF THE At 6 years i At 14 years 8 9 II 3 15 I 16 4 17 4 18 5 19 7 20 3 9 " 10 " 4 18 " 10 11 " 5 19 " 3 12 " 7 20 " 5 13 " As a general rule from 20 to 30 years may be said to be the age when tattooing is most practised. It is sometimes made use of at the very beginning of life. Berchon frequently observed a tattoo mark on infants at the foundling hospitals in Paris, and he learned from the midwives that it was done by them at the request of the mothers for the purpose of enabling them to identify their off- spring at some future time. The mark is generally a slight one, placed alongside of a vein to avoid a conspicuous appearance. You will recollect in Beaumarchais' play of " The Marriage of Figaro," that an incident of this kind is introduced, and the foundling who had been tattooed at birth by the attending physician with the pro- fessional emblem of a spatula is identified by him at the critical moment. Tattooing among women in civilized life is almost confined to prostitutes. Occasionally a sailor's mistress or wife may be in- duced to submit to the inscription of a love token, but it is not common. Parent-Duchatelet, in his classic work on prostitution, states that the women who came under his observation were never tattooed upon parts of the body habitually exposed, or which were easily uncovered in ordinary life, as the arms, but the upper part of the arm or shoulder, the space beneath the breasts, and espe- cially the chest, were the spots chosen. If the girl were young the inscription would be the name of a man, with perhaps " pour la vie'^ added, or the initials merely, "/>. /. v.'' Sometimes the name would be inscribed between two flowers or under two hearts pierced with an arrow. These paragons of fidelity tattoo a new name Upon changing their lover. One girl at La Force had thirty names upon her bust. In women more advanced in life the inscription is often found on the abdomen between the umbilicus and the pubes; but it is never a man's that is found there, always a woman's. Parent- Duchatelet observes that the reason for this is obvious when the passion wlach these women frequently entertain for their own sex is remembered. It is a remarkable fact that in no instance did he ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 57 find any obscenity tattooed, the women in that particular present-' ing a striking contrast to the men with whom they associate. In Algeria, according to Gillebert D'Hercourt," prostitutes are tattooed upon the face, on the alae of the nose, on the forehead, chin, lower lip, arms and wrists. Sometimes the back of the hand is covered with a lace-work pattern in the shape of a mitten. When a woman of this class quarrels with her lover, she applies a burning cigarette to his name on her arm or chest. Lacassagne saw many cicatrices of burns produced in this manner. Tattooing as a love- token is not a recent custom with them. Purchas, in his Pilgrimage, published in 1613, says: " The Egyptian Moores, both men and women, brand their armes for love of each other." Moorish women are the professional tattooers among the Arabs, and stand in the market place to offer their services. Before concluding this sketch of tattooing it is necessary to say something of the occasional accidents arising from the practice, and also of its use in surgery. The operation of tattooing, simple as it may appear, is not un- frequently attended by severe inflammation, erysipelas, gangrene, and even death. In i860 the French minister of marine issued an order forbidding the practice of tattooing in the navy on account of the danger attending it, some men having lost their arms, and some their lives. In 1862 Dr. Berchon made a report to the Academy of Sciences, in which he gave the details of forty-three cases of accidents from tattooing; eight in which death resulted either directly or in- directly ; eight in which amputation was performed, viz : one of a finger, one at the wrist, four of the arm, one at the shoulder, and one of a thigh ; seven cases in which gangrene occurred, in two of them extending over an entire limb ; twenty-five characterized by inflammation, requiring at least a month's treatment, and one unique case of arterio-venous aneurism at the bend of the elbow. I have met with another case, however, of this latter injury, pro- duced by the same causes, in a recent German medical journal. Lieut. Colonel Woodthorpe, in a paper describing the tribes of the Naga Hills, recently read before the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain, says : "The operation of tattooing is sometimes attended with fatal 1^ Anthropologie d'Alg6rie. M6m. Soc. d'Anthropbl. de Paris, III, 17. 58 TRANSACTIONS OF THE results. I was once asked to visit a poor little girl about lo years old, whose legs had been tattooed a few days before. The opera- tion had resulted in inflammation and mortification of the limbs. I went into the house where the poor little thing — sad votary of fashion — lay screaming with pain. The sores were dreadful, both legs apparently rotting away below the knee. =i« H« * Fashion, whether in tight lacing or tattooing, claims its victims all over the world. '"2 Of the danger of accidental inoculation of syphilis from tattoo- ing, a striking instance has already been given in the account of the twenty-two men who were operated upon by the tramp Kelly. Of these men four had never had syphilis, but escaped untainted ; three of them had had syphilis before, and their cases may be con- sidered doubtful ; fifteen had never had the disease, and were all infected by the tattooing. Simonet, in the Progres MedicaP^ for 1877, describes eight cases of syphilis produced by the saliva of a tattooer. In a quite recent number of the British Medical Journal (1882, II, 632) is an account of the case of a young soldier of the Scots guard, the finest man physically in the regiment, being 6 feet 4 inches high, and most symmetrically formed ; upon a tattooed figure upon his forearm chancres were developed, followed by the usual train of constitutional symptoms. An unintentional case of tattooing occurred not long since. A gardener fell from his ladder and severely excoriated one side of his nose on the gravel. He was working with charcoal that day, and from time to time rubbed the aggrieved member with his blackened fingers, until the result was a beautiful piece of ineradicable tattoo- ing on the side of his nose. Finally, tattooing is to be ranked among the resources of the surgeon. In certain diseases of the eye a white spot is formed on the cornea, and is unpleasantly conspicuous. The oculist, by adroitly tattooing it with an appropriate color, materially lessens the disfigurement. A similar treatment has been successfully applied to ncevus, a congenital erectile tumor known as ''mother-mark," and in a 12 Notes on the wild tribes inhabiting the so-called Naga Hills on our north- east frontier of India. Lieut. Col. R. G. Woodthorpe, R. E. Jour. Anthrop. Inst. Lond., 1882, xi., 196-214. " 1877, v., 205. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 59 simpler form as "port-wine stain," the color of which being much darker than the surrounding skin, is susceptible of considerable im- provement by tattooing. An ingenious piece of work of this de- scription was performed by a non-professional operator. A sailor had a large congenital red stain on his breast, which a tattooer con- verted into a figure of liberty waving the tri-color. The artist left enough of the original red to form the Phrygian cap, the robe of the goddess and the red part of the flag, and so adroitly added the other necessary colors as to entirely disguise the primitive mark and to present a very handsome specimen of tattooing. In certain cases where di&ease or injury has destroyed portions of the face and left the teeth uncovered, the ghastly disfigurement can be remedied by making artifical lips with flaps cut from the cheeks or other parts of the face, but the edges of the mouth so formed are of course of a livid, unnatural color. By tattooing with a red pigment Dr. Schuh, of Vienna, has succeeded in producing quite respectable though scarcely rosy lips. A French army surgeon has proposed to employ tattooing as an adjunct in the treatment of hemorrhage from wounds in battle. In most of the continental armies systematic attempts have been made to instruct the common soldier how to act in certain emergencies of his profession. Manuals have been written for him, and in the German army a handkerchief is issued on which are printed illus- trations of bandaging, of applying improvised tourniquets and of the method of carrying the wounded. The surgeon in question, M. Comte, taught the men how to compress the brachial artery with their fingers, so that pulsation would entirely cease at the wrist. In like manner they were shown how to compress the femoral artery and the carotid. The men became greatly interested, but it was evidently of the first importance that they should know where to apply this digital pressure, and they readily consented to allow the surgeon to tattoo a broad line on the precise location in each man*s limb at which the artery could be most effectually com- pressed. An experiment was made to test the quickness with which the proceeding could be conducted. A soldier fully equipped, and accoutred was supposed to receive a gun-shot wound of the leg. In one minute's time his comrades had relieved him of his arms, ex- tended him on the ground, removed his clothing and compressed the femoral artery on the tattooed spot, so that all pulsation ceased beneath it. Of course an experiment on the parade ground is very 60 TRANSACTIONS OF THE - different from practice on the field of battle, but it is probable that the proposed arteriography, as M. Comte calls it, might save a per- centage of lives. " In connection with the medical use of tattooing a curious bit of history may be told. During the late civil war the professional bounty-jumper became as dangerous a foe to the Government as the armed enemy. He was taught most adroitly to conceal his dis- abilities, and if rejected at one recruiting depot, he would present himself at another, succeed in being enrolled, pocket the enor- mous bounty, and desert, to renew the proceeding. To aid in detecting these men the examining surgeons were directed to make a certain mark over the loins with nitrate of silver. This would remain for some days, and served to warn the next medical officer. The plan worked admirably until a woman discovered the mark upon her husband, and the explosion came. The newspapers teemed with indignant exclamations at the outrage inflicted upon free-born Americans by branding them like cattle, and the harm- less device was necessarily abandoned. The noble citizens whose sensibilities were thus wounded, robbed the Government of many millions; one of them acknowledged that he had enlisted and deserted thirty-two times. And, now, what can we say as to the causes of the prevalence of this singular custom of tattooing ? Lombroso regards it, as above, all due to atavism. There is some confusion in the use of this term ; ev ,n Topinard seems to confound it with heredity when speaking of the Austrian lip and Bourbon nose. Atavism is in one sense heredity, it is true, but it is properly used to express a recurrence to a type derived from some more or less remote ancestor. The term itself is objectionable as lacking in precision, and the expression " atavic inheritance" as distinct from ''continuous inheritance" is to be preferred. It does not seem that a decorative art like tattooing could be derived from recurrence, but that it is rather the result of imitation and tradition. Darwin suggests another reason. After speaking of tattooing and similar customs, he says : " It is extremely improbable that these practices, which are fol- " De l'h6mostase temporaire dans les blessures de guerre. De I'art^riographie ou application du tatouage a. la chirurgie d'arm6e, par J. Comte. (Paris these,) Paris, 1880, 4°. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 61 lowed by so many distinct nations, are due to tradition from any common source. They rather indicate the close similarity of the mind of man, to whatever race he may belong, in the same manner as the almost universal habits of dancing, masquerading, and mak- ing rude pictures. ' ' ^* In 1856, Father Garucci published a work entitled " Grafitti de Pompei."'® A proverb, common to many languages, says that ' ' walls are fools' writing paper. ' ' The walls of the houses in Pompeii abound in stylus pictures and inscriptions, a great many of which are copied in the work of Garucci. Lacassagne points out the striking resemblance between the grafitti, or picture-writings, and the general style of design of the tattooers. Take one example : Garucci prints an emblem consisting of a heart with the name Wu-A-q inscribed in it, which he interprets to mean '' Psyche is my heart, or in my heart." Lacassagne has more than thirty designs in his collection exhibiting the same thought as this grafittd. In other respects a similarity is to be observed ; both tattooing and picture-writing are ideographic, expressing a thought by an image or a symbol. Some of these designs are phonetic, and rebuses are common to them both. It has frequently been asserted that there is an analogy between the adornments of tattooing and heraldic bearings. This is true to some extent in savage life. Captain Burton, speaking of Abbeokuta, says, " Every tribe, sub-tribe, and even family, has its blazon, whose infinite diversification may be compared with the lines and ordi- naries of European heraldry. ' ' " Father Mathias G. says that in Oceania every royal or princely family has a family of tattooers especially devoted to their service, and that none other can be permitted to produce the necessary adornment. Gillebert D'Hercourt,'^ on the other hand, says that among Arabs and Kabyles tattooing cannot be regarded as a sign distinctive of religious or political sects or as a tribal badge. Formerly the great Arab families tattooed their slaves with an uniform mark for identi- fication and as a badge of ownership, but the custom is dying out. ^6 Descent of Man. New York. 187 1. II. 327. ^^ Grafitti de Pompei, transcriptions et gravures tracees au stylet ; recueillies et interpreters par Raphael Garucci. 2e 6dit. Atlas de 32 pi. Paris. 1856. " Abbeokuta. I. 104. ^^ Etudes anthropologiques sur 76 indigenes de I'Algdrie, par le dr. Gillebert D'Hercourt. Mem. de la Soc. d'anthropologie de Paris. III. 1868-1872. 62 TRANSACTIONS OF THE The cross imprinted on the forehead by the Kabyles, and which was once supposed to indicate their Christian origin, is equally worn by the Mahometan tribes of the south, and is purely orna- mental. Mothers tattoo their children from taste or caprice, and very frequently with the same patterns they use in their embroidery. A Moorish woman in reply to the question said, "It is done for beauty, it is an ornament, a flower. ' ' If the inquiry as to the origin of the custom be addressed to aboriginal tribes there is no satisfactory knowledge to be obtained. The legends which pretend to account for it are generally childish or absurd. Tylor refers to this view in his " Primitive Culture." He says, "Of the legends of tattooing, one of the oddest is that told to account for the fact that while the Fijians tattoo only the women, their neighbors, the Tongans, tattoo only the men. It is related that a Tongan on his way from Fiji to report to his country- men the proper custom to observe, went on his way repeating the rule he had carefully learnt by heart, "■ Tattoo the women but not the men," but unluckily he tripped over a stump, got his lesson wrong, and reached Tonga repeating, " Tattoo the men but not the women; " an ordinance which they observed ever after. ^^ Such ex post facto legends are very unsatisfactory and lead us to agree with Tylor' s conclusion that " though it may be consistent with the notions of savages to relate such explanatory legends, it is not con- sistent with our nations to believe them. ' ' It may be added that the most embarrassing cases of explanatory tradition are those which are neither impossible enough to condemn, nor probable enough to receive. Another tattooing legend is told by Latham.^ He says, " Does any one believe this, namely, that one of the forms of tribute to one of the conquerors of one the branches of the Khyens [a race in Aracan] was the payment of a certain number of beautiful women ? To avoid this, the beautiful women tattooed themselves so as to become ugly. This is why they are tattooed at the present time. So runs the tale. In reality they are tattooed because they are savages. The narrative about the conqueror is their way of explain- ing it." 19 Primitive Culture, by E. B. Tylor. 2v. 8vo. London. 1871. i. 355. so Descriptive Ethnology, by R. G. Latham. 2v. 8vo. London. 1859. I. 152. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 63 The obverse of the legend occurred in Burman. A handsome woman of rank was discovered in an intrigue with a young man of low birth. She was tattooed in the face in order to punish her by the destruction of her beauty. '■^^ It has been asserted that tattooing was adopted to conceal the nakedness of the body, and in that manner to take the place of clothing. There seems to be no foundation for the belief. Cer- tainly modesty was absolutely unknown to the tattooed natives of Otaheite, as described by Captain Cook and Sir Joseph Banks. The distinguished anthropologist, Miklucho-Maclay, in a recent communication to the Society of Ethnology of Berlin, describing the natives of the archipelago of Pelan, states that the women all have the mons Veneris tattooed. The hair is removed by evulsion before the operation is performed. Miklucho-Maclay frequently asked young girls to lift up their "kerint," a sort of petticoat of leaves which they wore, and to show him their tattooing. They readily complied, seeming to have no feeling of shame or modesty in relation to the matter. The appearance, he adds, was that of a triangular piece of blue stuff ; ^"^ and a plate of it duly appears in the Verhandlungen of the Society. Chief Engineer Melville informs me that the tribe of Tungoos which he had the good fortune to meet soon after landing at the mouth of the Lena were entirely unacquainted with the practice of tattooing, and evinced the most unbounded astonishment at the tattooed designs on the arms of some of his sailors who had stripped for ablution. They were curious to know how it was done, and perhaps some future generation of Tungoos may have a legend to tell as to the origin of tattooing in their tribe, in which that gallant officer may play a part. Whatever may have been the causes which produced the custom of tattooing among savage races, its adoption and the perpetuation of its use among civilized man must be accounted for by other motives. These may be summarily stated as follows : I. Vanity. A childish delight in the display of an ornament; the pleasure of being thought singular and original. ^^ Gouger, op. cit., p. 201. '* Anthropologische Notizen, gesatnmelt auf siner Reise in West-Mikronesieu und Nord-Melanesien im Jahre, 1876. Verhannl d. Berl. GeselUch. f. Anthrop. Ethnol., und Urgeschichte. Berl. 1878. x. 107., i pi. 64 TRANSACTIONS OP THE 2. Imitation. This is, perhaps, the most prolific cause. A soldier who was rallied for his tattooed designs, replied, "We are like sheep; we can't see anything done by a comrade without imitating it, even though it hurt us. ' ' 3. Idleness ; and to it must be attributed the prevalence of the custom among soldiers, sailors, criminals, and prostitutes. 4. Religion has some influence from its tendency to preserve ancient customs. At Loretto and Jerusalem tattooing is almost a sacred observance. Of 102 tattood Italian criminals, 31 had religi- ous emblems. 5. The passions, both noble and ignominious. Friendship, family affection, love, lust, hatred, and revenge, all find expression by this device. Dr. Albertotti describes what he calls an epidemic of tat- tooing.''' Twelve young men of excellent families, upon leaving the College of Castellamonte, tattooed each other's arms with a symbol relating to their student days ; in most instances with the name of a professor or a comrade. It must be observed that, although most prevalent among the lower classes, tattooing is by no means confined to the ignorant or debased. It is not long since the English papers rather indignantly commented up>on a statement in the Revue des deux mondes that the Prince of Wales, when at Jeru- salem, had permitted an anchor to be tattooed upon his arm.''* Of the 378 men observed by Lacassagne 299 could read and write. 6. Heredity. While dissenting from Lombroso's theory of atav- ism, it seems probable that symbols of trades and occupations, devices from flags or seals, and perhaps heraldic bearings, have been handed down by tattooing through many generations. Lastly, a feeling of esprit de corps, which, among soldiers, sailors, and members of secret societies, would lead to the adoption of a characteristic badge, must not be omitted from the category of motives. The custom cannot be said to be dying out. On the contrary, it prevails as much as ever, and so widespread and deep-rooted is the taste for this barbarous adornment, even in civilized life, that we ''^ L'Uomo delinquente, p. 83. ^* Revue des deux Mondes. 1881, 15 Juin. Voyage en Syrie, par Gabriel Charmy. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 65 must perforce assign to tattooing a permanent though lowly place in the division of technology, which includes the decorative arts. Nearly 250 years ago a curious book appeared, which is now very scarce, entitled, Anthropometamorphosis : Man transform' d, or the artificial Changeling, by John Bulwer.^^ It is a description of the various methods of adorning or disfiguring the different parts of the body in different countries, and, in some homely rhymes, he thus expresses his indignation at the custom of tattooing : There Art with her bold stigmatizing hand Doth streaks and markes upon their visage brand. The Painter- stainers here assume a place, From whence descended our face-taking race ; Their faces red and white, blacke, yellow, bleu, Distain'd, all sorts of an imposed hue. •X- ***** * Painted with lists here, naked arms behold. Branded and sounced with colors manifold. ******* About their legs strange lists they there doe make, Pricking the same with needles, then they take Indeliable tincture ; which rubbed in The gallants doe account the bravest gin. ******* Thus cap a peia is that gallant great, Horrid transformed self-made man compleat. Admitted for to see each ranged file, Can indignation give you leave to smile ? DISCUSSION. Prof. Mason inquired whether the symbols employed in sign language were ever found tattooed upon the body. Dr. Fletcher thought not, but said that messages and other forms of recognition were of frequent occurrence. Col. Mallery said he understood that in Burmah tattooing was held to be a test of courage, but, if females as well as males were tattooed there, this seemed unfavorable to that view. Dr. Fletcher spoke of the great endurance displayed by the women of savage tribes in submitting to the operation, and said ^^Anthropometamorphosis: Man transform' d, or the artificial Changeling, by J. B. London. Sq. 8vo. 1653. 5 66 TRANSACTIONS OF THE that disgrace and often chastisement followed any disposition to complain. It was considered a sort of ordeal. Col. Seely, Examiner in the Patent Office, referred to the ease with which tattooing might be imitated. He said that inquiries had been made at the Patent Office by the agents who were inter- ested in the case of the New York woman who was midergoing the process, whether a patent could be obtained which should prevent imposture by counterfeiting it. Dr. Hoffman remarked that the Serrano Indians of southern California formerly practiced tattooing, the designs upon the cheeks and chin being also drawn or incised upon trees or posts which marked the boundaries of the individual possessions. These facial designs were known to the several members of the tribe, and when found, as stated, upon boundary posts they were at once recognized and the claim respected. The custom was still in vogue in 1843. In the northern part of California the women only tattoo, with the exception of a single tribe. The custom is said to have originated in the necessity of having some means of identifying captives taken during war, as the mixture of languages resulting from constant intercommunication created confusion, and language would not be sufficient evidence on account of frequent similarities, either by being of the same linguistic stock, by adoption of another, or by the incorporation of foreign words. Hence, the tattooed lines adopted by the women are in reality marks of tribal distinction, and a particular style will be found stereotyped among the female members of any given tribe. The Mattoal was the only tribe of that State in which the men tattooed. They adopted a mark of tribal designation, which consisted of a single round blue spot in the middle of the forehead. The Klamath Indians, of Oregon, had a single line of black running down over the middle of the chin. The women had three lines, one from each corner of the mouth and one from the centre of the lower lip, reaching down to the end of the chin. Half-breed girls had but one, vertical in the middle of the chin. The material used consists, generally, of root or finely powdered charcoal. Pricking is produced by means of a sharply pointed piece of bone, thorns, fish spines, and, more recently, needles. Other tribes were also mentioned where painting had taken the place of tattooing ; and in conclusion the speaker stated that the man Kelly, who had inoculated many persons with syphilis while ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 67 tattooing them, had been examined by him, and a considerable number of patients had also been under his treatment at the time, in Pennsylvania. Mr. Coombs said that the practice of tattooing by civilized races was very ancient, and that Herodotus speaks of it in his histories. Mr. Reynolds said that while Dr. Fletcher's paper was devoted to modern, ''civilized" tattooing, he would refer to the same practice among the ancient Britons, mentioned by Caesar, Plmy, and Herodian. These writers relate that the Britons stained their bodies with woad, to give them a blue color, and that they were in the habit of drawing upon their naked bodies the figures of animals of all kinds, which they esteemed so great an ornament that they wore no clothes, in order that the figures thus delineated might be exposed to view. This mode of picture-makmg was considered a distinct and highly honorable art among the savages of the British Isles. Persons of inferior rank had but few of these figures, of coarse workmanship, painted on their bodies; while those of better families had them in greater numbers, of more elaborate dimensions, and more ele- gantly executed, according to their different degrees of nobility. Isidorus, in commenting on the inhabitants of the southern part of the Island, says " The name of the Picts corresponds very well with the appearance of their bodies ; for they squeeze the juice of certain herbs into figures made on their bodies with the points of needles, and so carry their badges of nobility on their spotted skins." The speaker alluded to the many hundreds of cases of tattooing as practiced in the American and British navies. The most preva- lent designs in the former service are crosses, hearts, a nude Venus rising from the calyx of a lily, banners, stars, masonic emblems, and anchors. Sentimental mottoes are of common occurrence. The tattooing sometimes requires weeks to finish — especially in large or intricate subjects, is always followed by swelling, and sometimes a limb is lost and even life itself is jeopardized. The art is confined principally to the forearm and wrist, although cases had met the speaker's observation where the entire posterior part of the body had been subjected to this painful process. Among the most elaborate designs which he had noticed, or heard of, was that of a hemisphere covering the back and shoulders of a sailor, which led to his being called by the somewhat appropriate 68 TRANSACTIONS OF THE name of "Atlas." Another sailor — a Scotchman — had his legs tattooed in colors to represent the tartan hose of his clan. A third case, was seen at Gibraltar, where an old British man-of-wars-man had the battle of Trafalgar tattooed on his back. The English fleet was depicted on the right side of the spine and extended from the posterior crest of the ilium to the scapula ; the contending fleet being ranged along in a similar manner on the opposite side of the vertebrae. Another remarkable but morbid case, was where a sod- ded grave was finely tattooed on the buttocks of a sailor; a weeping willow drooped limply over the grave, while on a tomb- stone at its head were recorded the epitaph and many virtues of the still-living " deceased. ' ' The speaker had heard that blistering or scarifying the tattooed parts and then washing with warm milk, would cause the colors to disappear. He also alluded to the galley slaves whom he had seen in the '' Murion " and "Belle-Poule," at Toulon, south France. He had heard that it was the former practice of the government to tattoo certain parts of the galley slaves' bodies in order to identify them, in case they should escape from the ships or from the penal colony in New Caledonia. In the British army it was formerly the custom to brand deserters in the back with a hot iron, by which the letter '' D" was indeli- bly formed. To hide this stigma, the persons thus branded resorted to elaborate tattooed figures which effectually concealed the injured part. Sixty-Second Regular Meeting, January 2, 1883. Major J. W. Powell, President, in the Chair. Capt. C. E. Button made a verbal communication on The Hawaiians, of which no abstract has been furnished the Secretary. Numerous inquiries from Prof Mason, Prof. Goode, Mr. Coombs, and other members were satisfactorily answered by the speaker, further illustrating his subject. Sixty-Third Regular and Fifth Annual Meeting, January i6th, 1883. Major J. W. Powell, President, in the Chair. The election of Mr. E. P. Burgess, teacher in the High Schools ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 69 of this city, Mr. Albert Niblack, midshipman U. S. N., on duty at the National Museum, and Mr. J. King Goodrich, of the National Museum, to active membership, was announced. The Treasurer made his report for the year. The Society then proceeded to a ballot for officers, of which the following is the result : President . . . GARRICK MALLERY. Vice President— Section A . . ROBERT FLETCHER. « B . . J. C. WELLING. " C . .J. W. POWELL. '< D . . OTIS T. MASON. General Secretary . . . W. J. HOFFMAN. Secretary to the Council . . F. A. SEELY. Treasurer J. HOWARD GORE. Curator . . . . C. C. ROYCE. G. K GILBERT. Council at Large A.,F. A. KING. H. W. HENSHAW. EDWARD ALLEN FAY. LESTER F. WARD. [DAVID HUTCHESON. The amendments which had been duly proposed to the Constitu- tion were then taken up and acted upon. The one proposed by Mr. Ward relative to times of holding meetings as provided in Article XIII was discussed and finally laid on the table. That proposed by Prof. Mason relative to fees and dues as pro- vided in Article XV, was also discussed at length, amended, and finally adopted in the following form : For the first clause of Article XV substitute these words — " The admission fee shall be five dollars, which shall exempt the member from the payment of dues during the year in which he is elected. The annual dues thereafter shall be three dollars, to be paid prior to the election in January." Sixty-Fourth Regular Meeting, February 6th, 1883. Prof Otis T. Mason, Vice President, in the Chair. On motion it was resolved that the reading of the papers, assigned for this evening, be postponed until the next regular meeting. 70 TRANSACTIONS OF THE Sixty-Fifth Regular Meeting, February 20th, 1883. Colonel Garrick Mallery, President, in the Chair. The election of Gen. William Birney, Dr. George M. Acker, Mr. John H. Renshawe, and Dr. John Hamilton Porter, as active members, was reported. Col. F. A. Seely read the following paper entitled, "An Inquiry INTO THE Origin of Invention : ' ' The industries of the present day, with their machinery, appli- ances, and products, have not escaped that inquiry into their origin which man gives to everything that is prominent in his physical or intellectual horizon. In investigating the origin of many mechanic arts and expedients research has been well nigh exhausted. The plough, the forge, the loom have been traced back to rude originals, sometimes antedating the historic period, and the account of their growth forms no small part of the history of civilization. But with all the attention that has been paid to particular arts, processes, and mechanical appliances, it is noticeable that invention itself, the faculty through which man has wrought out his multitudi- nous contrivances, has scarcely attracted attention to its history. And yet, neither as a curious problem in itself, nor in its bearings on the history of the human race, does it seem unprofitable to inquire : What were the first steps by which man became an inven- tor ? Out of what germs did he derive his first mechanical ideas ? Were they original with him or borrowed ? If derived from some other source, what was it ? And what were the first improvements which may justly be regarded as inventions ? These questions are very different from inquiries into the origin of the steam engine, the growth of a couple of centuries ; or of metal working, which does not reach far beyond the historic period ; or of the loom, which cannot be as old as the use of skins for clothing. They reach back to an antiquity to which the earliest historic date is as yesterday. History barely skims the surface of these remote depths. As far back as she takes us, we find men liv- ing in the midst of mechanical appliances not widely different from to-day's. Wood and metal and stone were wrought, sometimes with effects which are the despair of our artisans, agriculture in its highest perfection was carried on, textile industries were highly developed, and the so-called mechanical powers, which constitute ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 71 the elements of all our labor-saving machinery, were practically as well known as they are now. It is equally idle to question archaeology. She can guide us no further than, groping in caverns or delving in alluvium, she finds evidence of man's existence in bits of imperishable flint or charcoal ; but she cannot tell us at what period of his progress he began to work the refractory flint, or found use for fire in the preparation of his food. If we question mythology, we find no more satisfactory answer in her dim traditions and dreamy personifications of natural phe- nomena. She may ascribe to Osiris and Apollo the invention of the plough and the lyre, but cannot tell us when or where these personages lived, nor anything of man's vast and varied history before he attained the social condition which favored the cultivation of music, or had so far succeeded in domesticating beasts of burden that the use of the plough was possible. The mythologies reach no further than a stage of organized society. The arts at whose origin they hint are the arts of a people on a high plane of civilization. To consider the nature of the first steps in mechanical invention, far back of history, of tradition, and of the revelations of archaeo- logical research, is the object of this paper. In this inquiry there would at first seem to be a field for bound- less conjecture, and for little certainty; but I am convinced that the subject need not be wholly left to conjecture. In all arts, the history of their progress is a history of elaboration, of successive steps, or accretions. It is by the superimposition of one slight improvement upon another, that, within the period of recorded history, they have been perfected, and we may read their history as we may count the courses in a monument, from the foundation up- ward, or from the capstone downward ; and the process by which the monument has reached its height is as clearly legible read from the top as from the bottom. It is in this way that men whose business is with the study of inventions read their history. They pass backward from the perfected machine or product, eliminating in reverse order the successive improvements that have been made, and so arriving at successively simpler and ruder forms until the original germ is reached. It is otherwise in books. In them we trace forwards the gradual growth, for instance, of the steam engine, from the toy of Hero of Alexandria, through the crude experiments of the 17th century, the pumping machines of Papin 72 TRANSACTIONS OF THE and Savary and their contemporaries, Humphrey Potter's shrewd contrivance to relieve himself of shifting the valves, Watt's com- plete engine, and so on, step by step, one slight improvement upon another, until we reach the mighty engines of our own time. We cannot conveniently nor logically write history except in this direct order ; but in our own minds, in scanning the history of an art, we always trace it backwards, just as the traveler looks back over the route he has passed. We separate from the perfected engine its latest improvements, always going back to less perfect forms, until We reach the clumsy pumping machine with an impatient boy pull- ing the valve-strings with one hand and rattling the marbles in his pocket with the other, cogitating how he can make the machine actuate its own valves while he disports himself more to his satis- faction. The valve movement removed, we next eliminate the cold water jet in the cylinder for condensation, then condensation by cold water outside the cylinder, and we have reached the stage where the steam engine is represented by a philosophical apparatus in which the energy of steam is exerted upon a piston, but with no adaptation to any practical purpose. Here is the beginning of the steam engine proper, since back of this we find nothing but specu- lative experiments to demonstrate the existence of energy, but with no practical notion of its utilization. But if this is the beginning of the steam engine proper, there is in it, and fundamental to it, a mechanical appliance, without which it could never have been devised, and the origin of which we are apparently as far from as when we began. I mean the cylinder and piston common to the engine and the ordinary pump. Where this contrivance originated would be an interesting subject for special research, the lift pump in which it is so familiar to us being un- known to the ancients,^ In the cylindrical bellows of China and Madagascar, however, we find an apparatus embodying these ele- ments, probably well known in Europe during the Middle Ages. This was, no doubt, a modification of some earlier form of the bel- * It seems probable that the idea of the force pump was familiar to the ancients. Machines constructed by Hero of Alexandria (lOO B. C.) and Ctesibius f 130 B. C.) are thought to have been double cylinder force pumps, lacking only the air cham- ber of being practical fire-engines, equal to any in use a century ago. (See Das Feuer, by Dr. Gustav Lindner, Briinn, 1881.) It is hard to refrain from fancying^ how the world's history might have been affected if Hero, in his experiments with steam, had thought of applying it to his piston and cylinder. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 73 lows, more like that familiar to us. But whence came the bellows ? We may reasonably presume that this rather complicated structure was elaborated from a ruder form, originating in the use of inflated skins or bladders with nozzles of reed, used in the primitive metal- lurgic processes of our remote ancestors. Can we go a step further? We have left only the human lips and lungs with the possible assis- tance of a tube of reed. Here the backward journey ends, for we have reached the limit, the possession of man in a state of nature, before any step in invention had been taken. This process of reading the history of a machine or art, which may be called elimination, is strictly evolution read backwards. Although in passing out of the field of recorded history we work in the dark, yet, by means of this process, we work with all the cer- tainty with which we read the geological history of the earth by- boring downward through the successive strata. It is true we may err, as the geologist finds faults which, for the time, mislead or deceive him ; but no doubts trouble him as to the essential truth of his science or the certainty of the results he compiles from many observations. And so, if we take up any art or machine and trace its history in this way, we may not always follow exactly the actual routes they have taken to reach their present perfection ; but we shall surely, by eliminating at each step that "which is clearly an improvement or modification of some earlier form, arrive ultimately at as rude mechanical expedients as the remote germ out of which the idea of the steam engine appears to have sprung. And we may be certain that in the contemplation of any structure, however rude, we have not reached its ultimate origin so long as it shows a trace of improvement upon a ruder form or an earlier art. Let us apply the process of elimination to an instrument quite simple, but complex enough to be the outcome of many succes- sive improvements, the bow and arrow of a savage. I will not describe the bow, but the arrow is of wood or reed. It is pointed with metal, flint, or bone, and the point, which is barbed, is bound in place by strips of sinew. The butt is notched and feathered, sometimes with three feathers set on spirally. If we knew nothing of the history of this instrument, we could read in it? structure that it was the result of growth, that human ingenuity never at once could have originated it as perfected, but that the details mentioned point to long ages of experience and successive improvements. We cannot tell, in all respects, in what order these improvements 74 TRANSACTIONS OP THE have been made ; but we are safe in saying that the arrow, in the form of a dart or light lance, must have antedated the bow, while some of its peculiar features, such as the spiral feathering, most probably were added to it since the invention of the bow. The true order of elimination then appears to be to drop first the spiral feather, then perhaps all feathering, then the notched butt, along with the bow itself, leaving a light, pointed and barbed lance, of which the Zulu assegai or the Greek javelin may be taken as types. Both of these are familiar from drawings and otherwise, and need not be described in detail, the shaft and barbed metal point being their leading characteristics, and both being adapted for either thrusting or hurling. Assuming that the progenitor of the arrow was a weapon of this character, we proceed in our work of elimi- nation by taking away the metal point and substituting a point of ruder material — stone or bone. A barbed point is evidently an improvement on a plain lance point, so we next eliminate the barb. But the shaft having an attached point of harder material must have been preceded by a shaft having its point integral with it, a mere pointed rod, the type of which is used by the aborigines of South America in both their arrows and lances. To what does the next step in elimination lead us? To an unpointed rod, a blunt stick adapted for striking as well as thrusting, the bough of a tree broken off by the wind, or a stalk of cane — any rude provision of accident unmodified by human effort. Such a stick, in the hands of a per- son who used it with a thrust, and adapted or selected for such use, is the rudimentary type from which have come the lance, the arrow, the bayonet, all thrusting tools and weapons, even the spade and plough. Used as a striking implement or weapon, and selected or adapted for such use, from the same rudimentary type were evolved the club, the hammer, the axe, the sword, and all tools and weapons whose effectiveness depends on a swinging blow. If we had been pursuing the history of the axe, or sword, or spade, we should have reached the same result. So many elements enter into every mechanical structure of our day that in attempting to read back their history we are like one who explores a river upward from its mouth. He must pass by many a minor affluent, and pursue that which appears to be the main stream. He may even mistake a tributary for the main stream, and so reach an ultimate source widely different in locality from ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 75 the actual one. No river, however, is fully explored till all its tributaries have been followed to their sources; and equally the history of no invention has been gathered until each of its com- ponents has been separately traced to its own near or remote origin. But as the little spring in western New York, which may give rise to the Alleghany, differs in no essential particular from the little spring thousands of miles away, from which the Missouri ^nay take its ultimate rise, so with the two important elements, the shaft and attached point, which constitute the arrow. Some time in its history they have come together. I have chosen to eliminate the point as the subordinate and tributary element. If we prefer to eliminate the shaft and pursue the history of the point, we must take it as a type of cutting and piercing implements. We shall pass from knives of steel to knives of bronze, thence to knives of polished stone, thence to a ruder form of dressed flints, thence, perhaps, to such flakes of flint, or slate, or other material as presented them- selves to man without preparation. Here, as in the case of the shaft, we find man in a state of nature using no a,rt, but selection only. The shaft led us to a stick, the point, to a stone. The cutting edge which man found in a shell or splinter of cane might answer his purposes equally well, but whether shell or cane, or slate or flint, he used only what nature provided. If, instead of following up the cylinder and piston of the steam engine, we had discarded these and pursued the history of the crank, so conspicuous in its structure, we could not trace it back of a recent historic period. Compared with the antiquity to which this study reaches, it is a modern invention, if not modern actually; but the wheel to which it is attached, if followed up, will lead us back through many intermediate steps to a savage rolling together logs and boulders for a shelter or defence. Here again, so far as able, he would use his selection out of what nature provided, but arti- ficial preparation there was none. From illustrations like these of the elaboration of inventions, (and they might be indefinitely multiplied,) it appears that the appli- ances, the arts, the tools and complex engines of modern industry and war may all be traced back to rude types in a few simple mechanical expedients which man possessed at his earliest origin, and employed, guided by his own selection, and which have been supplemented by other expedients from time to time discov- 76 TKANSACTIONS OP THE ered or invented.* In the whole circumference of the arts every radius leads to the one center, where we find man, with intelligence enough to choose from what nature has provided that best adapted for his use, but, as yet, without skill or knowledge to alter or modify the rude material she furnishes. What were these expedients of primitive man ? Such slight consideration as I have been able to give them, to- gether with a contemplation of correlative facts in natural history, leads me to this belief: that the mechanical expedients possessed by the earliest human beings were such, and such only, as they possessed in common with the brutes. This belief is not affected by the question whether man was himself the product of evolution or of a special creation. The only difference would be that what in one case he possessed by inheritance, he must have acquired in the other by imitation. The question to be answered is, therefore, what were the mechanical expedients possessed by the brutes, which primitive man with his structure and needs may have inherited or imitated ? Without considering the wonderful manifestations of instinct in the higher mammals, or the ingenious contrivances of birds and insects, I shall regard only what is displayed to us in the natural history of those animals which are nearest to man in their physical structure, and from whom, or from creatures like whom, he must have inherited his earliest habits and instincts, or from observation of whom, he may have derived his notions regarding food, shelter, and the maintenance of his existence. Since all the Simiadae are arboreal in their habits^ we find them largely marked by similar characteristics, while in the Anthropo- * Since this was written I have met with Mr. John Evans' address before the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at Liverpool, in 1870, in the course of which occurs the following language : "As the most eminent living naturalist conceives it not only possible, but probable, that all animals have descended from, at most, only four or five progenitors, and all plants from an equal or lesser number, so I think that an examination of the history of human arts and manufactures will reduce the material appliances possessed by our first progenitors to at least as small a tale." There are numerous hints in the same address that I would have found valuable in the preparation of the present paper, which may be regarded as a chapter in such an examination as Mr. Evans suggests. It is gratifying, however, to find some of the views I have enunciated confirmed in advance by the opinion of so eminent an authority ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 77 morpha there are special habits particularly claiming our attention. It is not always easy in a study of these to distinguish between the habits of the animal in its wild state, and those it has acquired by training or association with man. Unfortunately, writers on the habits of the apes and monkeys have generally studied them in the wire cages of the Botanical Garden, or as domestic pets, or possibly as stuffed specimens, and reliable details of their habits and prac- tices when unaffected by the interference or proximity of man, are quite limited. Out of voluminous narratives of their instinct and cunning while under habitual human observation, with which popu- lar works on natural history abound, I have culled a few facts which appear to relate to these animals in their natural state. I have not attempted to group or classify them, but present them in the order in which I happened to meet -with them. Some monkeys, in order to extract the meat from oysters, have been observed to thrust stones between their open shells. This is stated as a general fact, not attributed to any particular tribe or species. Natives of the Gaboon country say the Chimpanzees unite to attack the elephant, the lion, and other beasts of prey with clubs and stones. The Entellus will catch a sleeping snake by the neck and grind off his head on the nearest stone. Some species of Cercopithecus fill their paws with dust or sand, and fling it at their assailants. The Diana monkey used a stone to crack nuts and almonds. The Green monkeys break off branches of trees to throw down on their enemies. Of the Magot or Barbary ape it is said that they frighten and in some degree command the huge animals of the forest by pursuing them with hideous cries, and throwing down branches of trees on them. This practice of throwing down branches of trees is also related of the Stentor, one of the American apes. The Atiles or Spider monkey catches mussels and oysters and crushes their shells by pounding them with stones. Possibly careful search would fully confirm these meager facts. It is not likely it would add to them materially. Such as they are, they admit of a rude classification into — ist. The use of stones as implements, involving the notion of the hammer and the wedge. 78 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 2d. The use of stones as missiles ; and under this head I use the word stone as generic, including anything within the animal's reach adapted to be thrown by the hand. 3d. The use of branches of trees or sticks as clubs. 4th. The use of the same as missiles. Beyond these, and of the greatest moment to this inquiry, is the well-recorded habit of shelter building by the Anthropomorpha, at- attributed to every species. Many writers allude to this, but the only description I have been able to find is by Du Chaillu, who says of the Nshiego-Mbouve, a species of Chimpanzee : ' ' They build a kind of leafy nest among the boughs of the loftiest trees. This nest is composed of small interlaced branches, well thatched with leaves, and impenetrable to water. Fixed by firmly tied bands, it is generally from six to eight feet in diameter, and presents the form of a dome, an arrangement which readily throws off the water."* From this incomplete description we conceive of a structure like the following : after a place has been selected in which the boughs by their natural forms and relations are adapted to the purpose, they are brought together so as to form a skeleton, or frame work. The interstices are then partially filled by interlacing either the smaller branches and twigs of the same boughs, or broken branches from the same or neighboring trees. Over this is laid a thatch of leaves, and the whole is secured by bands passing over it, which may be strips of some tough bark, flexible vines, or withes. Possibly this conception is more perfect and elaborate than the actual structure; but whether this is so or not, the mechanical expedients employed by the builder are most important additions to the list already ob- served. These are (5th) interlacing, or plaiting, which consists in passing the boughs in and out transversely of other boughs, in the familiar form of a hurdle or wattled hedge ; and (6th) tying, the well known and only original method of securing two parts of a structure together by a third piece, of some flexible material. The important expedients of the thatch and sloping roof are also worthy of notice. With our limited knowledge of the habits of these brutes in their native state, it is quite possible that we have not enumerated all the *I quote this from Figuier's Mammalia, page 603. The author attributes it to Du Chaillu without naming the work in which it is found. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 79 mechanical expedients they possess. Such as we have found are enough for the present purpose. No one can imagine that man, in the lowest condition that may be attributed to him, can have pos- sessed less. I shall therefore from this point regard them as his original endowment, in which can be recognized elements for the supply of all his prime necessities — food, shelter, and defence. As yet raiment was not a necessity. The stone was an implement with which he procured food. Living on indigenous fruits and roots, and edible fungi perhaps, he seldom had use for implements ; but the spectacle of a- group of boys about an apple or chestnut tree reminds us how the stone might be used to bring down the fruit, and it obviously served a convenient use in cracking nuts, and as a wedge in circumventing the modest oyster. As a missile it was a means of attack and de- fence against savage beasts. The original uses of the stick were similar. It was both a striking and hurling implement, and was used both for procuring food and for attack and defence. The expedients employed in the construction of his shelter were presumably not at first used by man for any other purpose ; but they involved the two arts of tying and plaiting, and for the practice of the former the possession of the thong of bark or withe. Man must have supplemented these expedients with the knowledge of some material facts. He observed, for instance, that bodies left to themselves fall to the ground, and he can hardiy have failed to recognize this as a general truth from the moment he was capable of any sort of generalization. He could distinguish such properties in bodies as weight and lightness, that some float in water while others sink, and that some are easily wafted by the wind while others hold solidly against it. He had lacerated his hands and feet on the sharp edges of rocks and shells, and thorns and briars had pierced his flesh, so that he must have known the cutting edge and penetrating poiijt long before he availed himself of them for any use. These did not require to be discovered or invented, but were a provision of nature, waiting, as doubtless many provisions of nature are wait- ing yet, for the sluggish human mind to find uses for them. The conditions under which man employed these expedients dif- fered widely from those under which they were used by the quad- rumanous and arboreal creatures in whose possession we have found them. Erect, plantigrade, and terrestrial, striking and hurling 80 TRANSACTIONS OP THE implements have acquired in his hands a new importance. Their use, hitherto frantic and incidental, has become deliberate and habitual, and, through the higher structure and continued practice, skill, precision, and effectiveness have been developed. The shelter, built by the Chimpanzees in the tops of trees only, and framed from the growing boughs, man forms from contiguous saplings bound together at their tops, and supplemented by gathered poles or reeds.* New materials may have found their way into its struc- ture, and it may have increased in dimensions and in its adapted- ness for permanent use. Whether reason be a growth or a new faculty bestowed complete upon man, its first practical employment must have been upon material things, such as he was most immediately concerned with. His daily pressing wants, the means of securing food and shelter and repelling attacks, these were the subjects of his contemplation. By such contemplation and his acquired dexterity, supplemented by the narrow range of facts within his knowledge, he is guided to new expedients. For instance, observing the solidity of rocks and bowlders, he might have secured his shelter by lashing it to them. He might have found in grass and rushes more suitable materials than the boughs and leaves for binding the poles and saplings of its frame, for weaving into its interstices, and for its thatched roof. He may have become dexterous in the arts of thatching and plait- ing, and learned new and varied and secure forms of knots. Use- ing his judgment and selection, with experience he discerned what stones and pebbles were best adapted for his various uses, the round pebble of the brook for hurling, the sharp-edged flake for a wedge, * Compare this with the description of the first human shelter given by Viollet le-Duc in his charming work, " Habitations of Men." " Epergos selects two young trees a few paces apart. Climbing one of these, he bends it down by his weight, pulls towards it the top of the other, and thus joining the branches of the two, ties them together with rushes. The creatures round him find other young trees in the neighborhood. With their hands and with the help of sticks they uproot them and drag them to Epergos, who shows them how they should be inclined in a circle by resting their tops against the first two ti'ees. Then he shows them how to fill in the space with rushes, branches, and long grass inter- laced, then, how the roots should be covered with clay, and the whole structure successively, leaving an opening on the side opposite the wind." The author appears to have reached the notion of this shelter by a process of elimination, but it is evident he could have gone a step further, and found its origin, without the need of calling in the aid of a superior being. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 81 and such stones as afforded a convenient hand-grasp for striking. In the same way he found that particular forms of sticks were better adapted for special uses ; that to strike a powerful swinging blow, the greater weight should be remote from the hand ; while for effec- tive hurling, it might be more evenly distributed. And he found new uses for the stick. He may have acquired its use as a lever, and so possessed two of the mechanical powers. But we must ascribe to an early period among the distant ages under consideration the first employment of the stick as a thrusting weapon. Herein is a clear separation from all brute usages, which seem to be confined to aim- less brandishing, striking, and throwing ; and for its effective use in this way, man must have observed that instead of having the heavy end remote from him, as for a swinging blow, the smaller end must be advanced ; and so with no notion yet of improving on nature or accident by artificially pointing his stick, he selects for use with a thrust such sticks as are slender and reduced at their extremities. In these improved methods of using the old expedients, in these rude steps in progress marked by departures from brute usages, we may discern the feeble exercise of reason. Man did not begin at once to reason profoundly. His first notions of cause and effect, and of adapting means to ends, were of the humblest character, restricted by the narrow range of facts in his possession. With so slender a store of facts the reason of Newton or Bacon could have had no wider scope. In the ground I have gone over, I have roughly traced the original stock of mechanical expedients through three stages: their use by brutes, which we may regard as at the most casual and frag- mentary ; then their habitual use by man ; and then their use by man under conditions involving judgment, selection, and dexterity. The next stage is one in which improvements begin to be made on the old expedients in adapting them to new uses and to the supply of new wants. This is the first stage of invention. It would be impossible to determine what was actually the first of human inventions. It is probable that instead of one there were several, called forth by diverse needs and conditions, and so nearly contemporaneous that neither can be regarded as antedating the other. I think it might be shown also that there exists a certain natural order in mechanical invention, under which the process and and product precede the tool or machine by which they are after- 6 82 mANSACTIONS OF THE wards produced. We may be sure that the notion of striking is older than the rudest artificial striking implement ; that of propelling the arrow, than the bow ; that of navigating the water, than boats ; those of pottery and a textile fabric, than the wheel and loom. The process is performed and the product realized by some already known and rude expedient before the demand is created for im- proved tools to perform the process. Hence, we ought to expect the first inventions to be arts or processes rather than products or implements. Necessity is, in a certain sense, the mother of inven- tion, but this is by no means the whole genesis. The history of the subject will show that the necessities which give birth to inventions are generally the offspring of prior inventions or prior known expedients. Keeping these considerations in view, let us briefly consider the form which two or three primitive inventions may have taken : I. The club did not need to be invented. It was a stick, in which roughness was no objection, and which, as experience had taught, operated most effectively with a heavier and lighter end. Since this is the natural form of growing wood, nothing but selection was required to provide man with this weapon from, the boughs torn from the trees by wind or otherwise. So with the hurling stick. Improved forms and fashions may have developed at a later period with the introduction of the art of wood-working ; but for the period in question these weapons were the gift of nature. As I have before said , however, man had found a new use for the stick — as a thrusting weapon ; and I cannot but conceive that this use, once acquired, must have been a favorite one. By means of it a comparatively heavy blow is struck with a light shaft, and, at the same time, it was observed that the attitudes required in its use, in attack and defence, were securer than those necessitated in the use of the club. One is a cover as well as a weapon ; the other leaves the whole body exposed. In contests of every kind this advantage was not to be overlooked. As compared with the club, the pike is the higher type of weapon, exactly as the rapier is in comparison with the broad sword, or the bayonet with the battle axe, and in its use, even in the primitive form of a blunt stick, man must have been conscious of new power. He was not long (as we must reckon time at that period) in finding the adaptation to this use of splin- tered fragments of timber, which accident had pointed, and in the ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 83 exercise of his selection such splinters were eagerly sought for and may have been carefully treasured. There came a time when, pointed sticks being in demand, some genius conceived the idea of artificially pointing a common stick. In dragging over the rocks the poles for his shelter he had observed the abrading effect on their ends, and putting his knowledge to practical use he pointed a shaft by rubbing it on the rough surface of a rock. Here was an actual invention of the first magnitude — not of the pike be it observed, nor of the rough rock, these existed already; but of the art or process of working wood by abrasion. This art, once introduced, must have become a prolific parent. When man found it in his power to modify or improve the form of timber, he may have begun to apply the art to the perfection of his club — as in giving it a more convenient hand-grasp. The time was to come when he would find that the same result could be accomplished by applying a scraping or cutting implement to the wood, rather than the wood to the rock, and then he would begin to devise implements for convenient use. He was also to find that he had the power to change the form of other materials, such as shell or bone, and would devise appropriate processes and tools for the purpose. But these are more advanced steps in inven- tion, with which we are not now dealing. 2. Another of man's original endowments was the use of the stone for throwing. By his power of selection he had determined what stones and pebbles were best adapted to his purpose, and by virtue partly of his higher structure, partly of his practice, had acquired expertness and precision. Important as this expedient was to him, the throwing stone once used was no longer of value and was left where it fell. I can conceive that in his wanderings man may have come upon vast alluvial regions, where for long distances not a pebble was to be found. Here fruits and nuts adapted for food were growing, but practically out of his reach for want of his accustomed means of procuring them. Here also were savage beasts, but his accustomed means of defence against them were wanting. It might then have occurred to him to transport thither pebbles from some other point. In attempting to carry out this project he was met, as men have ever since been met in handling artillery, by the problem of transporta- tion. Nature, which had blessed the Cercopithecus with cheek- pouches and the marsupials with capacious pockets, had not been 84 TRANSACTIONS OF THE SO beneficent to the genus homo. His carrying capacity was limited to what his two hands would hold. Vessels and receptacles of every kind were for the future to devise. How was the inventor of the day to solve the problem ? It has been remarked that man had probably lashed his shelter to the rocks and bowlders, and in doing this had learned to secure a thong to loose and rounded stones about which it could be passed. These were larger and smaller, some- times with his untrained judgment too small for much service, and in such instances they might often have been moved about by the thongs attached to them. It could not have been an extraordinary suggestion to put. this expedient in practice to supply the new want. While, without some such expedient, man was limited in his carrying capacity to a pebble in each hand, he found that, by securing a slender thong to each, he could carry (or drag) quite a number in each hand. Here was a combination^ of the thong with the pebble ; two old elements uniting to form a new structure with special func- tions, and in it were all the elements of invention. But, like Humphrey Potter's scoggan, there was more in it than the inventor thought of. It solved the question of transportation, as his invention did that of playing marbles ; but when the weary man, after a toil- some day's travel with his unaccustomed burden, was about to seek repose and carelessly tossed it from him, he could have observed that he had done much more than to make a conveniently portable missile, and had added new effectiveness to the missile itself. By means of the thong he had given the stone greater velocity and longer range, and practically added to the power of his own arm. In short, he had invented the precursor of the bolas, the effective weapon of the Patagonians. We can see the type of it in the slung- shot, the convenient and deadly contrivance favored by the savages of New York and London. Out of this invention afterwards grew another. Some pebble, insecurely fastened, flew from its lashing and went whirling far, leaving its thong in the thrower's hand. A number of experiences like this might have suggested such a contrivance of the lashing that the stone could be discharged at will ; and the sling was invented, of the type of that made by the ancient inhabitants of Sweden out of the bark of the linden. While these do not appear to have been the parents of numerous inventions, having at a remote * I use the word " combination " in the strictly technical sense of patent law. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 85 period been generally supplanted by other forms of arms, they may be regarded as containing the first suggestions of long-range missiles, and we may trace to them such engines as the ballista and catapult, and, by a very slender connection, the cannon and other fire-arms. 3. Among the rude expedients employed by primitive man in the construction of his shelter was that of interlacing smaller lateral boughs with the upright poles or saplings. It is not unlikely, as I have before remarked, that at a very early period he so far modified this expedient as, when the conditions favored, to interlace grass or rushes with the boughs, and by this better material to increase the tightness of the structure. From plaiting or interweaving rushes with boughs it was but a short step to plait rushes with rushes, to make movable parts to cover needful openings; and so was formed the rush mat — the parent and prototype of all textile fabrics. Here was an invention involving both the process and product, long before flax was spun or flocks kept. 4. In the construction of his shelter with light and insecure mate- rials, stability had been attained by lashing it to such objects as had great weight or were firmly fixed in the ground. Roots and fallen trunks, rocks and bowlders had answered to these conditions ; but their use left the builder without the free exercise of his selection as to the place his shelter should occupy. In using these means quite frequently the spot would be one exposed, in case of storms, to overflow or to be swept by torrents ; and it was a suggestion of no small moment to roll the loose bowlders from their native beds to higher ground, and secure the frail fabric to. a number of them arfanged in a circle about it. Here was the first step in the use of more lasting materials in architecture, and an invention which was to transform the temporary shelter into the permanent house. From a mere ring of anchoring bowlders came in time the foundation, raising the superstructure from the ground, and by additional courses reaching some rude form of Pelasgic wall. If any of these inventions seem to be puerile, it is to be remem- bered that we are dealing with the remotest infancy of the human race. In the condition in which man must be presumed to have been at this period, they are inventions of a high order. I have selected them because they grow naturally out of the expedients with which man was primitively endowed, and because they may have been, and some of them must have been, made long before any 86 TRANSACTIONS OF THE dressing of flints or bone or the artificial preparation of any mate- rial that can long survive the action of natural decay. Indeed, unless all reasoning from analogy is at fault, the working of the softer material must have preceded the working of the harder. Man must have constructed pointed instruments of an inferior character and learned their value, before he conceived the idea of improving them by attached points of better material, or of con- structing tools to make them better and more expeditiously. The remains of these early arts will never disclose themselves to archge- ologic research. The wood and bark and rushes have passed away, and the pebbles that may have been so effective in peace and war are indistinguishable from any pebbles of the brook. But we do not need this material evidence. No art is known to us that has not grown up from simpler and ruder arts. This is a truth which does not belong to our time, but to the arts themselves. What is true of the inventions of Watt and Edison is true of those of Osiris and Tubal-Cain, and equally true of those of the unknown and naked savage, whose arts form the subject of our inquiry ; and we need no further assurance that back beyond the remotest period to which the rudest wrought stone implements can be ascribed, a thinking, reasoning, inventive man must have developed arts and progress capable of leading up to the construction of such imple- ments. I hope it will not be forgotten that the title of this paper restricts it to an inquiry. I have attempted to demonstrate nothing, since I had no preconceptions to maintain, or at least none which the first steps in the inquiry did not remove. The convictions I have stated are those which have formed in my own mind during the preparation of the paper, and since they point to conclusions quite at variance with those of prominent European anthropologists, I beg leave to dwell on them a moment, and to state the nature of these conclusions. In Prof. Boyd Dawkins' recent valuable work on " Early Man in Britain,"* he discusses at; some length the probabilities of man's existence in the different successive stages of the Tertiary period, finding no proof of his appearance till the Pleistocene. It having been maintained by very high authority on the other side of the •"■ London, 1880. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 87 British channel that man inhabited France as early as the middle of the Miocene, he alludes briefly to the evidence on which that opinion is partly founded, to wit : the flint splinters found in the Mid-Miocene strata of Thenay. He expresses doubt* as to whether these splinters are actually artificial, and suggests that, if they are so, they may have been the work of one of the higher apes rather than of man. This view, he adds, agrees with that of Prof. Gaudry, who had suggested as their author the Dryopithecus, the great anthropoid ape then living in France. This view is quite earnestly combatted by Mr. Grant Allen, in a paper entitled "Who was Primitive Man ? " in Xkse. Fortnightly Review for September, 1882, in which the writer declares his belief in the artificial origin of these rude splinters, and the evidence that they are of the Mid- Miocene period, but ascribes them to what he calls "a man-like animal," " acquainted with the uses of fire, and sufficiently intelli- gent to split rude flakes of flint," such a creature being in his view one of the links in the evolution of man, and his existence at that period being in harmony with that doctrine. These flints have occasioned much discussion in Europe, and. the opinions quoted are fairly representative of those expressed by many authors. It is clear that neither to Prof. Dawkins and Prof. Gaudry, nor to their critic, is it hard to imagine that a creature, inferior to man both in physical and mental structure, may have made such progress in art as to be able to work so difficult a material as flint, and have developed such wants as to call for the practice of that art. If they do not mean this, their language is meaningless, f There is no * A very reasonable doubt in view of the result of the careful examination made by a jury of fifteen experts at the Prehistoric Congress at Brussels, in 1872. Five members of the jury declared that they could not discover any evidence of human workmanship in the thirty-two specimens exhibited. f In a foot-note (p. 69) Prof. Dawkins says : " Even if the existing apes do not now make stone implements or cut bones, it does not follow that the extinct apes were equally ignorant, because some extinct animals are known to have been more highly organized than any of the living members of their class." When the question is regarded from its mechanical side, the pertinency of this suggestion is not obvious. It does not turn on actual knowledge how to shape flints, but on the process by which that knowledge was gained, and on the development of wants which made the exercise of the knowledge necessary. It is safe to presume, on the basis of evolution by natural selection, that, if at any geological period prior to the advent of man, apes had made the progress in art claimed for them, there would have been no room for man on earth : his place would have been taken. 05 TRANSACTIONS OF THE practical difference between their notions. Both lose sight of the nature of art and the laws of human progress, and both indicate a conception of art prior to man, but an inability to conceive of man as existing without a certain degree of progress in art. In fact the conception of man as existing prior to the fabrication of stone implements seems to be foreign to the ideas of those who have discussed his origin and antiquity. In the minds of anthro- pological writers it would seem that the first human creature, what- ever his origin, must have signalized his advent and perpetuated his memory literally in a " Monumentuin aere perennius" * by instantly, without preparation or conscious need, chipping out tools of flint. Only in the fancy of a Roman poet, who had never heard of neolithic or palaeolithic ages, do we find a conception of the rudeness and absolute dependence on the gifts of nature of the primitive man, whose earliest arms were his fists, nails and teeth, and stones and broken limbs of trees. f Coming to this subject, not as a student of the antiquity of man, but only as one whose daily business is the study of inventions, I find it presents to my mind an aspect more like the poetic fancy of * Horace, Lib. Ill, Ode 30. — The poet, in the following lines, well describes the enduring character of these memorials : " Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens Possit dirutre, aut innumera'biles Annorum series, et fuga temporum.''^ •j- Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, Lib. V : Arma antiqua manus, ungues, denies fuere, Et lapides, et item sylvarum fragmina rami. The quotation is familiar, having been cited in connection with the four suc- ceeding lines, to show that the conception of three stages of civilization known as the ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron were recognized by the ancients. I hazard the criticism that, while it clearly indicates a bronze period earlier than that of iron, it contains nothing that was meant to suggest what is now understood by the stone age. There is nothing in lapides that implies that the stones are wrought in any way, or are anything but such provision as nature furnishes in loose fragments and pebbles. The poet puts them in the same category and in the same stage with fragmina rami, which certainly does not mean dressed tim- ber. I doubt \ilapis is ever used for a flint stone. Some authors (see Vitr. 8, i) use saxum silex, and Plautus (Capt. 3, 4, 84) uses saxum alone for a flint im- plement with which victims were slain. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 89 Lucretius painted it than like that of the authors I have quoted. The maxim ''Art is long," is true, not only of its duration, but of its growth ; and in this sense not more true of the finished work of the Greek sculptor, than of the jagged flints, our only memorials of man in the earliest of the uncounted centuries of the palaeolithic age. The dressing of flint in any rude form by any creature must have begun long subsequently to the dressing of less difficult materials, since some such antecedents were necessary to develop the need of flint implements and the art of producing them. Hence I cannot conceive that the flints of Thenay, if artificial, can be the produc- tion of any creature less than a fully developed man. The human attributes of thought, reason, and invention were necessary for their fabrication, because all these were required in the antecedent steps which led up thereto. To me it is as easy and reasonable to attribute to an ape or a man-like animal the first wrought bronze or iron as the first wrought flint. Not less true, if applied to the mechanic arts, is William Humboldt's pregnant paradox : " Man is man only by means of speech, but in order to invent speech he must be already man." Indeed this thought applies with greater emphasis to mechanical invention than to vocal speech. We can easily suppose that man may have made as great advance in arts as I have described in this paper before his unformed speech had become distinguishable from the chatter of the beasts around him. It must have been one of the immediate results of his early mechanical progress to give large increments to language by the new ideas and wants which the arts engendered. It is not impossible that spoken language may have originated at this era, and so the man who invented speech must prior thereto have been a man by means of his mechanical inventions — to make which he must have been already man. We should probably search in vain among the lowest savage people known to us for a living type of our most ancient human progenitor ; low as his type may have been, he was neither anthro- poid nor pithecoid, but completely human, whether he made his appearance in the Post-Pliocene or in the Mid-Miocene, or whether he was the product of a special creation a few thousand years ago. Obviously archaeology can find no trace of a remoter age than that of stone, but I mistrust that the thoughtful anthropologist will accept the evidence of earlier ages, one of which, taking one of its 90 TRANSACTIONS OF THE perishable materials as the type of all, we may call the age of wood. Still further back must lie an age, as indefinite in duration as any, when man existed in his rudest condition, without arts of any kind, except such as he employed in common with lower animals, and this is the true primitive period. In such ages as these, just on the hither side of the indeterminate border which divides man from the brute creation, we must look for the beginnings of his mechanic arts, and with them of human history. The discussion was participated in by Messrs. Rock, Mason, Fay, and others. Mr. Ivan Petroff then read part of his paper on ''Aleutian Songs and Traditions," the hour of adjournment having arrived before he concluded. Sixty-Sixth Regular Meeting, March 6th, 1883. Colonel Garrick Mallery, President, in the chair. The Secretary, in the absence of the Curator, reported the fol- lowing gift : From the Academy. — Antiquarian proceedings from the Kongl. Vitterhets Historie och Antiquitats Akademiens of Stock- holm, for the years 1 872-' 81, inclusive. Mr. Petroff then read the concluding portion of his paper on "Aleutian Songs and Myths," of which an abstract has been been submitted. abstract. After referring briefly to the origin of the term Aleut, which he traced to the Kamchatkan river Olutora, and a group of islands named after the same on the earliest Russian maps, the speaker expressed the opinion that the tribal name of the people should be pronounced Unangan instead of Untlngtin adopted by Mr. Dall, the former reading being also supported by the authority of Veniami- nof. Mr. Petroff then recited some traditions of the origin of man, the earliest having been collected in 1815 by Louis Choris. Nearly all these myths represent at least one of the first couple as a dog, the children gradually assuming human shape. The myths also ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 91 agree in the statement that the first men came to the island from the north. During his travels in continental Alaska Mr. Petrofif met with some traditions corroborative of those of the Aleut. The later traditions of the tribe refer chiefly to warlike expeditions to the northward and eastward. One myth relating the origin of the sea otter was pointed out as furnishing almost the only explanation of the universal belief in the abhorrence on the part of the sea otter of anything that might remind it of the sexual relations of man and woman. Of Aleutian songs, Mr. Petroff said that though without rhythm or rhyme they were not without poetic thoughts and ideas. The lack of rhythm is made up by the addition of meaningless syllables, such as dnga, dngara, or aid, at the end of each line. The most popular songs are those reciting the deeds of warriors or hunters ; but a few specimens have been preserved of love songs, of which Mr. Petroff read both verbal and modified translations. DISCUSSION. Mr. Gatschet inquired whether the speaker found actual con- sonance and metre, or only the prosodic accent and assonance. Mr. Petroff repeated that lack of rhythm was made up by the addition of syllables at the end of each line, to which reference had been made in the paper. THE CARSON FOOTPRINTS. Mr. Gilbert spoke with reference to the supposed human foot- prints discovered at Carson, Nevada, communicating some of the results reached by his assistant, Mr. I. C. Russell, who visited the locality for the purpose of ascertaining the geological relations of the deposit bearing the impressions. During a period of geo- logical time, which is certainly not remote, the valleys of Nevada have been occupied by an extensive system of lakes, and these are believed by all who have investigated them to have been the con- temporaries of the ancient glaciers of the Sierra Nevada and Wasatch, and therefore of Quaternary age. Mr. Russell's investi- gations led him to assign to the Carson strata an earlier date. Without considering the palseontological evidence he ranks them Tertiary; thus according with Professors Marsh and Cope, who refer the mammalian fossils to the Upper Pliocene. To account for the peculiar footprints Mr. Russell suggested the same explanation which had been, unknown to him, proposed by 92 TRANSACTIONS OF THE Professor Marsh, namely, that they were produced by a gigantic edentate ; but no edentate bones have as yet been recognized in the fossils of the locality. Prof. Mason then inquired whether the Secretary had not enter- tained the belief that the impressions were human, as an article in the Revue d'Anthropologie, professing to quote Dr. Hoffman, stated them to be those of Tertiary man. The Secretary replied that the paper which had been presented last autumn, immediately after his return from Carson, contained no such statement, but called attention to the striking similarity between the fossil impressions and those of the ordinary imprint of a foot incased in a moccason or shod with a sandal. The error in the Revue was made after the paper left the author's hands. The Secretary remarked further that a cast of a typical impression had been on exhibition before the Society during the evening on which that paper was read, and every feature was characteristic of a human foot, though the belief was not entertained that primitive man had produced it. Some of the impressions at Carson are over six inches in depth, and yet in none of them is there any appearance that might suggest the presence of claws, such as would naturally exist in animals of the sloth family. Neither was there any evidence of an oblique indentation caused by the outer edge of the foot being put down first, as we find the sloths walk ; a habit which no doubt existed to some extent in the fossil forms. Sixty-Seventh Regular Meeting, March 20th, 1883. Colonel Garrick Mallery, the President, occupied the Chair, The Council reported, through its Secretary, the following names of foreign anthropologists who had been duly elected Honorary Members. The list, as read by Professor Mason, is as follows : Anoutchine, Demetri, Moscow, Russia. Beddoe, Dr. John, Bristol, England. Bastian, Prof. Adolf, Berlin, Prussia. Busk, Prof. George, London, England. Capellini, Prof. G., Bologna, Italy. Cartailhac, Emile, Toulouse, France. Chantre, Ernest, Lyons, France. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 93 Engelhardt, C, Copenhagen, Denmark. Evans, John, London, England. Fisher, Prof. H., Freiburg, Baden. FisoN, Rev. LoRiMER, Navuloa, Fiji Islands. Flower, Prof. William H., London, England. Haeckel, Prof. Ernst, Jena, Germany. His, Prof. W., Leipzig, Germany. HovELACQUE, Prof. Abel, Paris, France. Huxley, Prof. Thomas H., London, England. Icazbalceta, Senor Joaquim Garcia, Mexico, Mexico. Lubbock, Sir John, London, England. Mantegazza, Prof. Paulo, Florence, Italy. Maine, Sir Henry S., London, England. Meyer, Dr. A. B., Leipzig, Germany. MoRTiLLET, Prof. Gabriel de, Paris, France. Much, Prof. M., Vienna, Austria. Muller, Prof. Frederick, Vienna, Austria. NiLLSON, Prof. Sven, Lund, Sweden. Pitt-Rivers, Maj. Gen., London, England. Pozzi, Dr. Samuel, Paris, France. QuATREFAGES, Prof. A. DE, Paris, France. Retzius, Prof. GusTAV, Stockholm, Sweden. Sayce, Prof. A. H., Oxford, England. ScHAFFHAUSEN, Prof. H., Bonn, Germany. Schmidt, Dr. Emil, Essen, Prussia. Schmidt, Prof. Waldemar, Copenhagen, Denmark. Steenstrup, Prof. Japetus, Copenhagen, Denmark. ToPiNARD, Dr. Paul, Paris, France. Tylor, Edward B., London, England. Virchow, Prof. Rudolph, Berlin, Germany. VoGT, Prof. Carl, Geneva, Switzerland. WoRSAAE, J. J. A., Copenhagen, Denmark. In the absence of the Curator, the Secretary made the following report of gifts received since the previous meeting : From Major J. W. Powell. — The First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C, 1881. From Arni Thorsteinson. — Arbok hins Islenzka Fornleifaf6lags, 1880, 1881, 1882. From J. H. Rivett-Carnac. — Four polished celts of diorite, of normal type, showing gradations in size ; one ringstone, or 94 TRANSACTIONS OF THE "macehead;" one cast of a grooved stone hammer; one chipped celt of basalt, and a collection of cores, spalls, and flakes. All collected in the Banda District, Northwestern Provinces, India. The President then stated that through the courtesy of the Sur- geon General of the Army, rooms for the future meetings of the Society had been secured in the Army Medical Museum. He congratulated the members upon the very-pleasant quarters in which they were hereafter to meet. Mr. W. H. Holmes read the following paper on "Art in Shell," which was illustrated with both specimens and sketches: Attention has been but recently called to the fact that shells and shell material have held a very important place in the arts of the ancient peoples of this country.* Un worked shells have been employed in a variety of ways, according to their adaptability to the wants of man. They have also been artificially shaped, after the fashion of other materials, to add to their convenience as im- plements, utensils, and weapons. Their chief interest, however, lies in the special uses to which they have been applied. I refer to their employment by the primitive engraver as tablets on which to depict a variety of graphic conceptions. These tablets are gen- erally disk-like in form and are pierced near the margin for sus- pension about the neck. As a rule, they are cut from the most expanded portions of large marine univalves, notably the Busycon perversum. The concave outer surface is seldom used ; but the interior, which is by nature beautifully polished, has received the engraved design. There are also many pendants with plain surfaces which may have had particular significance to their possessors, as insignia, amulets, or symbols, or may have received painted designs of such a charac- ter as to give significance to them. But we find that many of the larger gorgets obtained from mounds and graves of a large district have engraved upon them designs of a most interesting nature, which are so remarkable in conception and execution as to com- mand our admiration. Such is the character of these designs that we are at once impressed with the idea that they are not products of the idle fancy. I have given much time to their examination, * Art in Shell. Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. In press. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 95 and, day by day, have become more strongly impressed with the belief that no single design is without its significance ; and that their production was a serious art, which dealt with matters closely inter- woven with the history, mythology, and polity of a people gradu- ally developing a civilization of their own. Although these objects were worn as personal ornaments, they probably had specialized uses as insignia, amulets, or symbols. As insignia, they were badges of office or distinction. The de- vices engraved upon them were derived from many sources, and were probably sometimes supplemented by numeral records repre- senting enemies killed, prisoners taken, or other deeds accomplished. As amulets, they were invested with protective or remedial attri- butes, and contained mystic devices derived from dreams, visions, and many other sources. As symbols, they possessed, in most cases, a religious character, and were generally used as totems of clans. They were inscribed with characters derived chiefly from mythologic sources. A few examples contain geometric designs which may have been time -symbols. That these objects should be classed under one of these heads and not as simple ornaments engraved with intricate designs for embellishment alone, is apparent when we consider the serious character of the work, the great amount of labor and patience shown, the frequent recurrence of the same design, the wide distri- bution of particular forms, the preservation of the idea in all cases, no matter what shortcomings occur in execution or detail, and the apparent absence of all lines, dots, and figures not essential to the presentation of the conception. In describing these gorgets I have arranged them in groups dis- tinguished by the designs engraved upon them. They are presented ih the following order: The Cross, The Scalloped Disk, The Bird, The Spider, The Serpent, The Human Face, The Human Figure. Within the United States ancient tablets containing engraved 96 TRANSACTIONS OF THE designs are apparently confined to the Atlantic slope, and are not found to any extent beyond the limits of the district occupied by the stone-grave people. Early explorers along the Atlantic coast mention the use of engraved gorgets by a number of tribes. Mod- ern examples may be found occasionally among the Indians of the northwest coast as well as upon the islands of the central Pacific. The symbol of the cross, which occurs in various forms in the art of the mound builder, is first in order, but, as my subject is extremely large, I shall omit its consideration for the present. Scalloped Disks. — In making a hasty classification of the many engraved gorgets I have found it convenient to place in one group a numerous and somewhat extraordinary class of designs which have been engraved upon scalloped disks. Like the cross, the symbol here represented is one that cannot with certainty be referred to an original. The general shape of the disks is such as to suggest to most minds a likeness to the sun, the scallops being suggestive of the rays. As this orb is known to be an object of first importance in the economy of life — the source of light and heat — it is natu- rally an object of veneration among many primitive peoples. It is well known that the barbarian tribes of Mexico and South America had well-developed systems of sun-worship, and that they employed symbols of many forms, some of which still retained a likeness to the original, while others had assumed the garb of animals or fan- ciful creatures. These facts being known, it seems natural that such a symbol as the one under consideration should be referred to the great original which it suggests. The well-known fact that the district from which these gorgets come was, at the time of discovery by the whites, inhabited by a race of sun -worshipers — the Natchez — gives to this assumption a shadow of confirmation. So far as I am aware, however, no one has ventured a positive opinion in regard to their significance, but such suggestions as have been made incline toward the view indi- cated. I feel the great necessity of caution in such matters, and, while combatting the idea that the designs are ornamental or fanci- ful only, I am far from attributing to them any deeply mysterious significance. They may in some way or other indicate political or religious station, or they may even be cosmogenic, but the proba- bilities are much greater that they are time symbols. Before ventur- ing further, however, it will be well to describe one of these disks. I have examined upwards of thirty of these, the majority of which ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 97 are made of shell; a typical example is presented in Fig. i. This specimen was obtained from a mound near Nashville, Tenn., by Prof. Powell. It was found near the head of a skeleton, which was much decayed, and had been so disturbed by recent movements of Fig. I. Shell disk from a mound at Nashville, Tennessee. the soil as to render it difficult to determine its original position. The shell used is apparently a large specimen of the Busy con per- versum, although the lines of growth are not sufficiently well pre- served to make a positive determination of the species. The sub- stance of the shell is well preserved ; the surface was once highly polished, but is now pitted and discolored by age. The design is engraved on the concave surface as usual, and the lines are accu- rately drawn and clearly cut. The various concentric circles are drawn with almost geometric accuracy around a minute shallow pit as a center. These circles divide the surface into five parts — a small circle at the center being surrounded by four zones of unequal width. The central circle is three-eighths of an inch in diameter, and is surrounded by a zone one-half an inch in width, which con- tains a rosette of three involuted lines ; these begin on the circum- ference of the inner circle in three small equidistant perforations, and sweep outward to the second circle, making upwards of half a revolution. These lines are somewhat wider and more deeply engraved than the other lines of the design. In many specimens 7 98 TRANSACTIONS OF THE they are so deeply cut in the middle part of the curve as to pene- trate the disk, producing crescent-shaped perforations. The second zone is one-fourth of an inch in width, and in this, as in all other specimens, is quite plain. The third zone is one-half an inch in width, and exhibits some very interesting features. We find placed at almost equal intervals six circular figures, each of which incloses a circlet and a small central pit. The spaces between the circular fig- ures are thickly dotted with minute conical pits somewhat irregu- larly placed j the number of dots in each space varies from thirty-six to forty, making nearly two hundred and thirty in all. The outer zone is subdividc-d into thirteen compartments, in each of which a nearly circular figure or boss has been carved, the outer edges of which form the scalloped outline of the gorget. Two medium sized perforations for suspension have been made near the inner margin of one of the bosses and next to the dotted zone ; these show slight indications of abrasion by the cord of suspension. These perforations, as well as the three near the center, have been bored mainly from the convex side of the disk. Whatever may be the meaning of this design, we cannot fail to recognize the important fact that it is significant, — that an idea is expressed. Were the design ornamental, we should expect variation in the parts or details of different specimens resulting from differ- ence of taste in the designers; if simply copied from an original example for sale or trade, we might expect a certain number of exact reproductions : but in such a case, when variations did occur, they would hardly be found to follow uniform or fixed lines ; there would also be variation in the relation of the parts of the concep- tion as well as in the number of particular parts ; the zones would not follow each other in exactly the same order; particular figures would not be confined to particular zones ; the rays of the volute would not always have a sinistral turn, or the form of the tablet be always circular and scalloped. It cannot be supposed that, of the whole number of these objects at one time in use, more than a small number have been rescued from decay; and these have been ob- tained from widely scattered localities, and doubtless represent centuries of time, yet no variants appear which indicate a leading up to or a divergence from the one original central idea. A design of purely ornamental character, even if executed by the same hand, could not, in the nature of things, exhibit the uniformity in varia- tion here shown. Fancy, unfettered • by ideas of a fixed nature, ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 99 such as those pertaining to religious or sociologic customs, would vary with the locality, the day, the year, or the life. The student will hardly fail to notice the resemblance of these disks to the calendars or time symbols of Mexico and other southern nations of antiquity. There is, however, no absolute identity with southern examples. The involute design in the center resembles the Aztec symbol of day, but is peculiar in its division into three parts, four being the number almost universally used. The only division into three that I have noticed occurs in the calendar of the Muyscas, in which three days constitute a week. The circlets and bosses of the outer zones give them a pretty close resemblance to the month and year zones of the southern calendars. My suggestion that these objects may be calendar disks will not seem unreasonable, when we remember that time symbols do make their appearance with many nations during the early stages of bar- barism. They are the result of attempts tb fix accurately the divisions of time for ,the regulation of religious rites, and among the nations of the south constitute the great body of art. No well developed calendar is known among the wild tribes of North America, the highest achievements in this line consisting of simple pictographic symbols of the years ; but there is no reason why the mound-builders should not have achieved a pretty accurate division of time resembling, in its main features, the systems of their southern neighbors. The Bird. — With nearly all peoples the bird has been an im- portant symbol. Possessing the mysterious power of flight, by means of which it could rise at pleasure into the realms of space, it natu- rally came to be associated with the phenomena of the sky, — the wind, the thunder, the lightning, and the rain. In the fervid im- agination of the red man it became the actual ruler of the elements, the guardian of the four quarters of the heavens. As a result of this the bird is embodied in the philosophy of many tribes. The eagle, the swan, the woodpecker, the owl, and the dove were creatures of unusual consideration ; their flight was noted as a matter of vital importance, as it served to indicate the future fortunes of the hunter and warrior. The dove, with the Hurons, was thought to be the keeper of the souls of the dead, and the Navajos are said to believe that four white swans dwell in the four quarters of the heavens and rule the winds^ 100 TBANSACTIONS OF THE The storm-bird of the Dakotas dwells in the upper air, beyond the range of human vision, carrying upon its back a lake of fresh water ; when it winks its eyes, there is lightning ; when it flaps its wings, we hear the thunder ; and when it shakes out its plumage, the rain descends. Myths like this abound in the lore of many peoples, and the story of the mysterious bird is interwoven with the tradi- tions which tell of their origin. A creature which has sufficient power to guide and rule a race is constantly embodied in its songs, its art, and its philosophy. Thus, highly regarded by the modern tribes, it must have been equally an object of consideration among Fig. 2. Shell gorget from Mississippi. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 101 prehistoric races. We know that the Natchez and the Creeks included the bird among their deities, and by the relics placed within their sepulchers we know that it held an important place in the esteem of the mound-builder. One of the most interesting of all these ancient relics is the gorget presented in Fig. 2. The design, which is clearly and symmetrically drawn, evinces a master hand. It would seem to embody one of those charming myths of the heavens, the sun, and the firmament, guarded by four mystic birds, the rulers of the winds. I am perfectly well aware that imaginative writing is not in keeping with scientific investiga- tion, but when it is remembered that the myths of the American aborigines are highly poetical and abound in lofty rhetorical figures, there can be no good reason why their art should not echo these rhythmical passages of the imagination. For one, I have not the least doubt that the design in question embodies in its almost unin- telligible symbols the chief features of a well-developed myth. To the thoughtful mind it will certainly be apparent that every line of this design is significant, not necessarily full of symbols of an occult nature; but, along with the songs and traditions of a departed race, this work had a place among the highest flights of their fancy, if not in the most important tenets of their philosophy. Yet, concern- ing these very works one writer has ventured the opinion that "they do but express the individual fancy of those by whom they were made;" that they are even without " indications of any intelligent design or pictographic idea. " I do not assume to interpret these de- signs : they are not to be interpreted. Besides, there is no advantage to be gained by an interpretation. We have many myths and systems of belief within our easy reach that are as interesting and instructive as these could be. All I desire is to elevate these works from the category of trinkets to what I believe to be their rightful place, the serious art of a people with great capacity for loftier works. What the gorgets themselves were, or what particular value they had to their possessors, aside from simple ornament, must be, in a measure, a matter of conjecture. They were hardly less than the totems of clans, the insignia of rulers, or the potent charms of a priesthood. The design has in this case been engraved upon the convex side, the concave surface being plain. The perforations are placed near the margin, and are considerably worn by the cord of suspension. In the center is a nearly symmetrical cross, of the Greek type, in- 102 TRANSACTIONS OF THE closed in a circle one and one-fourth inches in diameter. The spaces between the arms are emblazoned with groups of radiating lines. Placed at regular intervals on the outside of the circle are twelve pointed pyramidal rays ornamented with transverse lines. The whole design presents a remarkable combination of the two symbols — the cross and the sun. Surrounding this interesting sym- bol is another of a somewhat mysterious nature. A square frame- work of four continuous parallel lines symmetrically looped at the corners incloses the central symbol, the inner line touching the tips of the pyramidal rays. Outside of this again are the four symbolic birds placed against the sides of the square opposite the arms of the cross. These birds, or rather birds' heads, are carefully drawn after what, to the artist, must have been a well-recognized model. The mouth is open and the mandibles long, slender, and straight. The eye is represented by a circlet, which incloses a small conical pit intended to represent the iris ; a striated and pointed crest springs from the back of the head and neck, and two lines extend from the eye, down the neck, to the base of the figure. In seeking an orig- inal for this bird, we find that it has perhaps more points of resem- blance to the ivory-billed woodpecker than to any other species. It is not impossible, however, that the heron or swan may have been intended. That some particular bird served as a model is attested by the fact that other specimens from mounds in various parts of Tennessee exhibit similar designs. I have been able to find six of these specimens, all of which vary to some extent from the type described, but only in detail, workmanship, or finish. The Serpent. — The serpent has had a fascination for primitive man hardly surpassed by its reputed power over the animals on which it preys. In the minds of nearly all savages it has been associated with the deepest mysteries and the most potent powers of nature. No other creature has figured so prominently in the religious sys- tems of the world, few of which are free from it ; and, as art in a great measure owes its existence to an attempt to represent or embellish objects which are supposed to be the incarnations of spirits, the serpent is an important element in all art. Wherever the chil- dren of nature have wandered, its image may be found engraved upon the rocks, or painted or sculptured upon monuments of their own construction. It is found in a thousand forms. Beginning with those so realistic that the species can be determined, we may pass down through innumerable stages of variation until all sem- ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 103 blance of nature is lost. So well is the serpent known as a religious symbol among the American peoples, that it seems hardly necessary to present illustrations of the curiously interesting myths relating to it. We are not surprised to find the bird, the wolf, or the bear placed among representatives of the "Great Spirit," and hence to find them embodied in art; but it would be a matter of surprise if the serpent were ever absent. With the mound-builders it seems to have been of as much im- portance as to other, divisions of the red race, ancient or modern. It is of very frequent occurrence among the designs engraved upon gorgets of shell, a multitude of which have been thus dedicated to the serpent-god. It is a well-known fact that the rattlesnake is the species univer- sally represented, and these engravings on shell present no exception to this rule. From a very early date in mound exploration these gorgets have been brought to light, but the coiled serpent engraved upon their concave surfaces is so highly conventionalized that it was not at once recognized. Professor Wyman appears to have been the first to point out the fact that the rattlesnake was repre- sented ; others have since made brief allusion to this fact. Two examples only have been illustrated : one by Professor Jones, who regards it as being without intelligent design, and the other by Dr. Rau, who does not suggest an interpretation. Among the thirty or forty specimens that I have examined the engraving of the ser- pent is placfed, with one exception, upon the concave side of the disk, which, as usual, is cut from the most distended part of the Busycon perversum, or some similar shell. The great uniformity of these designs is a matter of much surprise. At the same time, however, there is no exact duplication : there are always differences in position, detail, or number of parts. The serpent is always coiled, the head occupying the center of the disk. With a very few exceptions the coil is sinistral. The head is so placed that when the gorget is suspended it has an erect position, the mouth opening toward the right hand. It is a remarkable fact that two species appear to be represented, one being the common yellow rattlesnake {Crotalus horridus) of the Atlantic slope, the characteristic markings of which are alter- nating light and dark chevrons. Fig. 3 ; while the diamond rattle- snake {Crotalus adamanteus) of the Southern Stales, probably served as a model for the other group. Fig. 4. 104 TRANSACTIONS OF THE As at first glance it will be somewhat difficult to make out clearly the figure of the serpent, even with the well-defined lines of the drawing before us, I will present the description pretty much in the order in which the design revealed itself to me in my first attempt to decipher it. Fig- 3- Fig. 4. Shell gorgets with serpent design from a mound at Sevierville, Tennessee. The saucer-like disks are almost circular, the upper edge being mostly somewhat straightened, the result of the natural limit of the body of the shell above. All are ground down to a fairly uniform thickness of from one-eighth to one-fourth of an inch. The edges are evenly rounded and smooth. Two small holes for suspension ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 105 occur near the rim of the straighter edge, and generally on or near the outline of the engraved design, which covers the middle portion of the plate. The diameter ranges from one to six inches. To one who examines this design for the first time it seems a most inexplicable puzzle — a meaningless grouping of curved and straight lines, dots, and perforations. We soon notice, however, a remarkable similarity in the designs, the idea being radically the same in all specimens, and the conclusion is reached that there is nothing haphazard in the arrangement of the parts, and that every line must have its place and purpose. The design is in all cases inclosed by two parallel border lines, leaving a plain belt from one- fourth to three-fourths of an inch in width around the edge of the disk. All simple lines are firmly traced although somewhat "scratchy," and they are seldom more than one-twentieth of an inch in width or depth. In studying the design, the attention is first attracted by an eye- like figure near the left border. This is formed of a series of con- centric circles, the number of which varies from three in the most simple to twelve in the more elaborate forms. The diameter of the outer circle of this figure varies from half an inch to an inch. In the center there is generally a small conical pit. The series of circles is partially inclosed by a looped band one-eighth of an inch in width, which opens downward to the left, the free ends extending outward to the border line, gradually nearing each other, and forming a kind of neck to the circular figure. This band is in most cases occupied by a series of dots or conical depressions varying in number from two to thirty. The neck is decorated in a variety of ways : by dots, by straight and curved lines, and by a cross-hatching that gives a semblance of scales. A curious group of lines occupying a cresent shaped space at the right of the circu- lar figure and inclosed by two border lines, must receive particular attention. This is really the front part of the head — the jaws and the muzzle of the creature represented. The mouth is always clearly defined and is mostly in profile, the upper jaw being turned abruptly upward ; but, in some examples, an attempt has been made to repre- sent a front view, in which case it presents a wide V-shaped figure. It is, in most cases, furnished with two rows of teeth, no attempt having been made to represent a tongue. The spaces above and below the jaws are filled with lines and figures which vary much in the different specimens; a group of plume-like figures extends back- 106 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ward from the upper jaw to the crown, or otherwise this space is occupied by an elongated perforation. The body is represented as encircling the head in a single coil, which appears from beneath the neck on the right, passes around the front of the head, and terminates at the back in a pointed tail with well-defined rattles. It is engraved to represent the well-known scales and spots of the rattlesnake, the conventionalized figures being quite graphic. Fig. 5. Shell gorget with spider design from a mound in St. Clair county, Illinois. The Spider. — ^Among insects the spider is best calculated to attract the attention of the savage. The curiously constructed houses of some varieties and the marvelous web of others must elicit the admiration of all beholders. It is certainly not strange that the spider appears in the myths. of savages, yet it occurs but rarely in aboriginal art. Four examples engraved upon shell gor- gets have come to my notice. The very fine specimen illustrated in Fig. 5 was obtained from a mound in St. Clair county, Illinois. It was found on the breast of a skeleton, and was very much dis- colored and quite fragile from decay ; but no part of the design, which was engraved upon the concave side, has been obliterated. Near the margin and parallel with it three lines have been ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 107 engraved. The spider is drawn with considerable fidelity to nature, and covers nearly the entire disk — the legs, mandibles, and abdo- men reaching the outer marginal line. The thorax is placed in the center of the disk, and is represented by a circle, within which a cross has been engraved. The ends of the four arms have been enlarged on one side, producing a form much used in heraldry, but one very rarely met with in aboriginal American art. The head is somewhat heart-shaped, and is armed with palpi and mandibles, the latter being ornamented with a zigzag line and prolonged to the marginal lines of the disk. The eyes are represented by two small circles with central dots. The legs are cor- lectly placed in four pairs upon the thorax, and are very graphically drawn. The abdomen is large and somewhat heart-shaped, and is ornamented with a number of lines and dots which represent the natural markings of the spider. The perforations for suspension are placed near the posterior extremity of the abdomen. A gorget having a similar design was obtained from a mound on Fain's Island, Tennessee. The insect has been somewhat more highly conventionalized, but the general effect is very similar to that of the Illinois specimens.* The Human Face. — A very important group of shell ornaments represent the human face more or less distinctly. By a combina- tion of engraving and sculpture a rude resemblance to the features is produced. These objects are generally made from pear-shaped sections of the lower whorl of large marine univalves. The lower portion, which represents the neck and chin, is cut from the somewhat restricted part near the base of the shell ; while the broad outline of the head reaches the first suture or the noded shoulder of the body whorl. The features are carved upon the convex sur- face. In the simpler forms the nose is represented by a low vertical ridge, no other features being indicated. Others have rings or perforations for eyes and rude indentations for the mouth, while the more elaborate examples have a variety of lines cut upon the cheeks or chin. Fig. 6 represents a specimen from the Brakebill Mound, East Tennessee. The mouth is not indicated and the nose is but slightly '•' Detailed descriptions of these objects will be given in the Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. 108 TRANSACTIONS OF THE relieved. Each eye, however, is inclosed by a figure which extends downward over the cheek, terminating in three sharp points. Fig. 6. Mask-like shell ornament from East Tennessee. Fig. 7. Mask-like shell ornament from Virginia. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 109 Fig. 7 represents a fine example of these objects said to have been obtained on Acquia Creek, Va. It is unusally well preserved and is five and one-half inches in length by five in width. The outline is somewhat rectangular, the upper margin being pretty well rounded, and ornamented with a corona of incised lines, which are arranged in six groups of four each. Inside of these a single incised line runs parallel with the edge from temple to temple. The eyes are represented by circles with small central pits, and the lids, by long, pointed ellipses. From each of the eyes a group of three zigzag lines extends downward over the cheek, terminating near the edge of the plate opposite the mouth. The nose is represented by a flat ridge, which terminates abruptly below, the nostrils being indicated by two small excavations. In regard to the peculiar lines engraved upon these faces, I would suggest that, if they are burial masks, the zigzag lines from the eyes may stand for tears, but I incline to the opinion rather that they are delineations of the tattooing or painting of the clan to which the deceased belonged. It is probable that these objects were further embellished by painted designs. These gorgets are especially numerous in the mounds of Ten- nessee, but their range is quite wide, examples having been reported from Kentucky, Virginia, Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas, and smaller ones of somewhat different types from New York and Lou- isiana. In size they range from two to ten inches in length, the width being considerably less. They are generally found associated with human remains in such a way as to suggest their use as orna- ments for the head or neck. There are, however, no holes for suspension, except those made to represent the eyes ; and these, so far as I have observed, show no abrasion by a cord of suspension. The Human Figure. — I now come to a class of relics which are new and unique, and in more than one respect are the most impor- tant objects of aboriginal art yet found within the limits of the United States. Of these I shall describe four which come from that part of the mound-building district occupied at one time by the "stone-grave" peoples — three from Tennessee and one from Missouri. Similar designs are not found on other materials, and, indeed, nothing at all resembling them exists, so far as I know, either in stone or in clay. If such were painted or engraved on less enduring materials they are totally destroyed. 110 TRANSACTIONS OP THE Fig. 8 represents a gorget on which is engraved a rather rude delineation of a human figure. The design occupies the con- cave side of a large shell disk cut from ^. Busy con perversum. Near the upper margin are the usual holes for suspension. The engraved Fig. 8. Shell gorget with rude human figure, from a mound at Sevierville, Tennessee. design fills the central portion of the plate, and is inclosed by two approximately parallel lines, between which and the edge of the shell there is an annular space three-fourths of an inch wide. A casual observer would probably not recognize any design whatever in the jumble of half obliterated lines that occupies the inclosed space. It will first be noticed that a column about three- fourths of an inch in width stands erect in the center of the picture. From this spring a number of lines forming serpentine arms, which give the figure as much the appearance of an octopus crowded into a collector's alcohol jar as of a human creature. A little study will enable one, however, to recognize in the central column the human body, and in the tangle of lines surrounding it, the arms, legs, hands, feet, and their appendages — no line within the border being without its office. The upper extremity of the body is occupied by a circle one-eighth of an inch in diameter, which represents the eye. The head is not distinguished from the body by any sort of constriction for the neck, but has evidently been ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. Ill crowned by a rude aurora-like crest similar to that found in so many aboriginal designs. The mouth is barely suggested by^three shallow lines placed so low on the trunk that they occupy what should be the chest. From the side of the head a number of lines, probably meant for plumes, extend across the bordering lines almost to the edge of the shell. Below these are two perforated loops, which seem to take the place of ears ; the one on the right is doubly perforated and has a peculiar extension, in a bent or elbowed line, across the border. The arms are attached to the sides of the body near the mid- dle in a haphazard sort of way and are curiously double jointed ; they terminate, howevei, in well-defined hands against the right and left borders, the thumb and fingers being, in each case, distinctly shown. The legs and feet are at first exceedingly hard to make out, but when once traced are as clear as need be. The body ter- minates abruptly below within an inch of the base of the inclosed space. One leg extends directly downward, the foot resting upon the border line ; the other extends backward from the base of the trunk and rests against the border line at the right ; the legs have identical markings, which probably represent the costume. Each foot terminates in a single well-defined talon or claw, which folds upward against the knee. This is a most interesting feature, and one which this design possesses in common with the three other drawings of the human figure found in Tennessee. The spaces between the various members of the figure are filled in with orna- mental appendages, which seem to be attached to the hands and feet, and probably represent plumes. The numerous perforations in this specimen are worthy of attention : within the border line there are twenty-six, which vary from one-fourth to one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter. They are placed mostly at the joints of the figure or at the junction of two or more lines. Such perfora- tions are of frequent occurrence in this class of gorgets, and may have had some particular significance to their possessors. This specimen was found in the great mound at Sevierville, Tenn., upon the breast of a skeleton, and is now in the National Collection. It has suffered considerably from decay, the surface being deeply furrowed, pitted, and discolored. The holes are much enlarged and the lines in places are almost obliterated. I began the study of this design with the thought that, in refer- ence to this specimen at least. Professor Jones was right, and that the confused group of lines might be the meaningless product of an 112 TRANSACTIONS OP THE idle fancy, but ended by being fully satisfied that no single line or mark is without its place or its significance. After having examined this design so critically it will be an easy matter to interpret that engraved upon the tablet illustrated in Fig. 9. Fig. 9. Shell gorget with human figure, from a mound, Meigs county, Tennessee. Although found in widely separated localities and engraved in a somewhat different style they are identical in type, and exhibit but slight differences in detail. At the top of the plate we have the two doubly conical perforations for suspension, but the double border line is not completed above, being interrupted by the plumes from the head. The head itself is decorated with the usual crown of radiating lines, a small circle with a central pit represents the eye, and below this is a well-defined mouth with a double row of teeth. Extending to the right from the mouth is an appendage consisting of one straight and two interrupted lines, which may be a part of the costume, or, since it issues from the mouth, may pos- sibly symbolize speech. The body, which is short and straight, is divided vertically into three parts ; the central space contains a large conical perforation, and is covered with a lace-work of lines; the lateral spaces are ornamented with rows of buttons or scales, ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 113 which consist of meagerly outlined circles with central dots. The curiously folded arms have precisely the same relative positions as the corresponding members in the other specimen, and the fingers touch the bordering line on the right and left, the thumb being turned backward against the elbow. The legs are represented in a manner that suggests a sitting posture, the rounded knees coming in front of and joining the base of the body; in position and dec- oration they repeat the other specimen. The feet, or the rounded extremities that represent them, rest upon the border lines, as in the case previously described, and terminate in upturned talons that are long, curved, and jointed, and have square or blunt tips. Plume-like appendages are attached to the arms and legs, and fill the spaces not occupied by the members of the body; these plumes or pendants are always represented by folded bands or fillets which are ornamented on one side with dots. A plume attached to the left side of the head is represented by two curved lines, which reach to thq, edge of the shell. There are five per- forations, two for suspension, two at the sides of the face, and one near the middle of the trunk. This specimen is in a very perfect state of preservation, the surface being smooth and but little stained. It is somewhat pear-shaped, resembling in this respect the mask-like gorgets previously described. It is about seven inches in height and five in width, and has been made from a very thick and com- pact shell — probably a Busycon. It was obtained from a mound in Meigs county, Tennessee, and is preserved in the Peabody Museum. In mechanical execution this specimen is much superior to the pre- ceding one ; the edges and surface of the shell are nicely dressed, although the lines of the design are indifferently cut. Another unique shell gorget is presented in Fig. lo. It was obtained from a mound in Southeastern Missouri, and is now in the possession of Professor Potter, of St. Louis. The disk is about four and a half inches in diameter, and was originally nearly circu- lar, but the edges are now much decayed and battered. A cut with a brief description is given by Mr. A. J. Conant in his recent work ''Footprints of Vanished Races," page 95. My cut is made from a photograph obtained from Professor Putnam, of the Peabody Museum. This is probably the same photograph used by Mr. Co- nant. The engraved design is of a totally distinct type from the last, and evinces a much higher grade of skill in the artist. It is encircled by six nearly parallel lines, which occupy about half an 114 TRANSACTIONS OF THE inch of the border of the disk. Portions of these still remain, the inner one being nearly perfect. Between this and the second line are two perforations for suspension. The idea first suggested by a glance at the engraved design is that it strongly resembles the work of the ancient Mexicans, and the second idea of many archaeologists will probably be that there may be a doubt of its genuineness. Setting this question aside for the present, let us examine the engraving in detail. Placing the plate so that the two Fig. io. Shell gorget with human figure, from a mound in Southeast Missouri. perforations are at the left we have the principal figure in an upright posture. This figure apparently represents a personage of some importance, as he is decked from head to foot with a profusion of ornaments and symbols. He is shown in profile with the arms extended in action and the feet separated as if in the act of step- ping forward. The head is large, occupying about one-third of the height of the design. The elaborate head-dress fills the upper part of the inclosed space, pendant plumes descend to the shoulders before and behind, and circular ornaments are attached to the hair and the ear. The conventionalized eye is lozenge or diamond shaped, with a small conical pit for the pupil. The profile shows a full forehead, a strong nose, and a promi- ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 115 nent chin. Two lines extend across the cheek from the bridge of the nose to the base of the ear. In and projecting from the mouth is a symbolic figure, the meaning of which can only be conjectured. The shoulders and body are but meagerly represented. From the waist a peculiar apron-like object is suspended, which reaches to the knees. The legs and feet are dwarfed, but quite well outlined. There are encircling bands at the knee and ankles, and a fan-like extension of the costume, somewhat resembling the tail of a bird, descends between the legs. Attached to the back, behind, is a figure of a rather extraordinary character. It is not unlike the con- trivance seen upon the backs of some of the figures in Mexican paintings for carrying burdens, and in which, at times, elfish figures are accommodated. The right arm is extended forward, and the hand grasps a singular shaft, with which a blow is aimed at the severed head of the victim, which is held face downward by the left hand of the standing figure. The severed head still retains the plumed cap, from which a long pendant descends in front of the face. The eye is lozenge-shaped. A zigzag line crosses the cheek from the ear to the bridge of the nose, and a curious symbolic figure is represented as issuing from the mouth. The shaft held in the right hand seems to issue from a circular figure, doubtless of symbolic character, which occupies the space in front of the head of the standing figure. It is possible that the figure which issues from the mouth of the victim represents the point of this mystic shaft which has penetrated the head, although we should have to allow some inaccuracies in the drawing if this were the case. Any one at all familiar with the curious pictographic manuscripts of the ancient Mexicans will see at a glance that we have here a sacrifitial scene, in which an officiating priest is engaged in the immolation of a human being. In the extraordinary manu- scripts of the ancient Aztecs we have many parallels to this design. So closely does it approach the Aztec type that, although no dupli- cate can be found in any of the codices, there is not a single idea, a single member or ornament, that has not its analogue in the Mex- ican manuscripts. Fortunately for the credit of this Missouri relic there are no duplicates — there are only family resemblances ; there are similar plumes, with similar ornaments and pendants ; there are similar costume and attitudes ; there are similar features and sym- bols : but there is no absolute identity, except in motive and con- ception. 116 TRANSACTIONS OP THE Among the multitude of works of art collected within the last decade, very few will be found to surpass in interest the fragment of a shell gorget from the McMahon Mound, at Sevierville, Tenn. (Fig. II.) The disk, when entire, was nearly five inches in diam- FlG. II. Shell gorget with fighting figures, from a mound at Sevierville, Tennessee. eter. A little more than one-third had crumbled away, and the re- maining portion was preserved only by the most careful handling and by immediate immersion in a thin solution of glue. This speci- men is the first of the kind ever brought to light in this country, and must certainly be regarded as the best example of aboriginal art ever found north of Mexico. The design, as in the other cases, is engraved on the convex surface of a polished shell disk, and represents two human figures, plumed and winged, with eagles' talons for feet, and engaged in mortal combat. As in the last speci- men described, this has at first sight an exotic look, bearing certainly in its conception a general resemblance to the marvelous bas-reliefs of Mexico and Central America; but the resemblance goes no further, and we are at liberty to consider it a northern work sui generis. The design has apparently covered the entire tablet, leaving no space for encircling lines. The two figures are in profile, and face each other in a fierce onset. Of the right-hand figure only the body, one arm, and one leg remain, the dotted lines in the cut indicating the parts restored. The left-hand figure is almost ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 117 complete, the outline of the face, one arm, and one foot being obliterated. The right hand is raised above the head in the act of brandishing a long double-pointed knife. At the same time this doughty warrior seems to be receiving a blow in the face from the right hand of the other combatant, in which is clutched a savage-looking blade with a curved point. The hands are vigor- ously drawn, the joints are correctly placed, and the thumb presses down upon the outside of the forefinger in its natural effort to tighten and secure the grasp. Two bands encircle the wrists and probably represent bracelets. The arms and shoulders are plain. The head is decorated with a single plume, which springs from a circular ornament placed over the ear. An angular figure extends forward from the base of this plume, probably the remnant of the head-dress proper. Forward of this, on the very edge of the crumbling shell, is one-half of the lozenge-shaped eye, the dot intended to represent the pupil being almost obliterated. It is a misfortune that both faces are gone ; their exact character must remain conjectural. A neat ornament is suspended upon the well- formed breast, and a broad belt encircles the waist, beneath which, covering the abdomen, is a design that suggests the scales of a coat of mail. The legs are well-defined and perfectly proportioned ; the left- knee is bent forward, and the foot is planted firmly on the ground, while the right is thrown gracefully back against the rim at the left. Double bands encircle the knees and ankles. The legs terminate in well-drawn eagles' feet, armed with vigorously curyed talons. A very interesting feature of the design is the highly conventionalized wing, which is attached to the shoulder behind, and fills the space beneath the uplifted arm. A broad, many-feathered tail is spread out like a fan behind the legs. The right-hand figure, so far as seen, is an exact duplicate of the left. Between the figures a de- sign of undetermined significance occupies the space beneath the crossed arms; it may represent drapery, but is more probably symbolic in its character. The heads were probably a little too large for good proportion, but the details of the anatomy are excel- lent. The muscles of the shoulder, the breast and nipple, the waist, the buttock, and the calves of the legs are in excellent drawing. The whole group is most graphically presented. A highly ideal design, it is made to fill a given space with a directness of execu- tion and a unity of conception that is truly surprising. Let us turn for a moment from this striking effort of the mound- 118 TRANSACTIONS OF THE builders to the early efforts of other peoples in the engraver's art. Look at the drawings of the Troglodytes of France, scintillations of palaeolithic genius which appear as a flash of light in the midst of a midnight sky. They are truly remarkable. The clear-cut lines that shadow forth the hairy mammoth suggest the graphic and for- cible work of the Parisian of to-day. The rude Esquimaux of our own time engrave images of a great variety of natural objects on their ornaments and implements of ivory in a manner that commands our admiration. But these shell tablets have designs of a much higher grade. They not only represent natural objects with pre- cision, but they delineate conceptions of mythical creatures of composite character for which nature affords no model. In execu- tion the best of these tablets will not compare with the wonderful works in stucco and stone of Palenque, or the elaborate sculptures of the Aztecs ; but they are, like them, vigorous in action and com- plete in conception. And now we come to the question of the origin of these objects, and especially of the specimen most closely resembling Mexican work. The Conant gorget is in many respects quite isolated from all others hitherto found in the Mississippi Valley. Must it be re- garded as an exotic, as an importation from the South, or does it belong to the soil from whch it was exhumed? In order to answer this question we must not only determine its relations to the art of Mexico, but we must know just what affinities it has to the art of the mound-builders. In the first place, gorgets of shell are a marked characteristic of the personal embellishment of the northern peoples. They may have been in use among the Aztecs, but do not appear among southern antiquities, and no evidence can.be derived from history. This gorget belongs, in its general character as an ornament, to the North. It is circular in form, it has two small perforations near the margin for suspension, and is made from the wall of a large univalve. The design occupies the central portion of the convex side of the disk, and is inclosed by a number of incised lines. In all of these features, together with its technical execution and its manner of inhumation, it is identical with the well-known work of the mound-builders. These analogies could hardly occur, if it were an exotic. It is true, however, as we have already seen, that the design itself has a closer affinity to Mexican art than to that of the North. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 119 It represents a sacrificial scene, and has many parallels in the paintings and sculpture of the South, whereas no such design is known in the art of any nation north of Mexico. The engravings of the mound-builders represent legendary creatures derived from the myths of the fathers, and in this respect have their paral- ells in the bird-man of the Haidahs, the war-god of the Zuiiis, and the mythical deities of other countries; but they are never illustrative of the customs or ceremonies of the peoples them- selves. As an ornament this Missouri gorget is a member of a a great family that is peculiarly northern, but the design engraved upon it affiliates with the art of Mexico. So close and striking are the resemblances, that accident cannot account for them, and we are forced to the conclusion that it must be the offspring of the same beliefs and customs and the same culture as the art of Mexico. DISCUSSION. Prof. Mason called attention to the striking similarity between the figures on the shell ornament shown in Fig. lo and one of the bas-reliefs found in Guatemala by Habel. President Mallery remarked that, during his examinations of the copies of the Dakota Calendar first seen by him, he was induced to believe that there had been an attempt to be precise in the details, which, on examination of other copies, proved not to be the case. In some of the charts, the characters are drawn from a central posi- tion spirally from right to left to the outer margin of the material upon which they are depicted ; in others, the spiral runs from left to right ; while upon others, the symbols are drawn in serpentine curves or in straight lines. There were also variations in the several figures, though the idea expressed was always the same for the characters in corresponding order. The fact that, in the many copies of the scalloped disk exhibited by Mr. Holmes, the charac- ters were absolutely identical, tended to show that they were not ordinary pictographs nor ideographs, which would admit of varia- tions of execution, but that they formed a conventional design — perhaps, as suggested, a time -symbol, not admitting of any va- riants. Dr. J. H. Porter then read a paper on "Cannibalism." abstract. Cannibalism was probably at certain periods of development as 120 TRANSACTIONS OF THE general as it is now exceptional. Existing as a custom, the practice exhibits itself under several distinct forms. How it became custo- mary, that is to say, the question of primordialism, is waived, be- cause an essential factor in the investigation, that relating to primi- tive i(ieas, could not be examined. Existing customs, however, are believed to be explicable according to the principles of sociological science. Cannibalism appears in several distinct forms, which are not necessarily successive stages of development, but which, starting from custom, have evolved into ceremonial observances of different orders. The unlimited anthropophagism of several districts of Africa is, so far as accessible evidence goes, determined neither by necessity, by fetichistic notions, nor by warlike or religious rites. It is not prevalent among the more degraded peoples, nor is it found in isolated and relatively undeveloped communities. Its continu- ance in societies among whom, in general, the practice is abhorred, and in a race exhibiting very great diversities of character and pro- pensity towards variation, must be due to some cause sufficiently powerful to counterbalance the tendency to change involved in the conditions under which anthropophagy exists. This cause was assumed to be Fashion, and the hypothesis was shown to be con- formable with the requirements of a vera causa, from the facts attaching to savagery at large, and from the ensemble of the negro's mental constitution. It was stated that the construction of a theory formed no part of the intention of the paper, which was merely a tentative towards the explanation of a social phenom- enon that did not admit of explanation, either as a morbid appetite, however acquired, or as a superstitious rite or ceremonial observance of any other kind. The explanation suggested for its persistence was considere(^ by the author to be sufficiently valid, from a scientific point of view, to justify the adoption of the hypo- thesis of Fashion as the cause of that particular form of cannibal- ism indicated. DISCUSSION. Dr. Morgan stated that although the paper just read referred to African tribes, he desired to ask whether the North American In- dians were ever known to have been cannibals. President Mallery replied that there were numerous instances on record, but thought that, if it occurred, the custom was referable to ritualistic observances. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 121 Mr. Henshaw, being called upon to state whether he had met with many instances of cannibalism in works on the North American Indians, replied that he had found no well authenticated cases. Dr. Morgan said he remembered reading in a history of Mary- land (Alsop's) that the Susquehannocks were cannibals, and de- voured victims. Dr. Fletcher called attention to a probably general prevalence of cannibalism at one time, and suggested that it might appropri- tely be considered as a fashion, or, perhaps, sheer love of good eating — epicurean cannibalism. Colonel Seely referred to the death of a notorious criminal in the south of Europe, who, in addition to other numerous crimes, had been found guilty of cannibalism, and who had remarked that human flesh was certainly sweet. This case might come under the same form spoken of by Dr. Fletcher, as illustrating a decided love of human flesh. Mr. Gilbert considered it rather as the survival of a once uni- versal custom, so that the question would not be in reference to the origin of cannibalism, but to the origin of the aversion to it. President Mallery said that the best authorities, or those upon whom we can place most reliance, do not refer to general anthropo- phagism, but state that certain pieces of the body or the heart are eaten, with the belief that the martial attributes of the victim are thus acquired by the one who partakes. Mr. Gatschet stated that the southern Oregonians took the heart out of the slain, and ate it for the purpose of obtaining the valor and fighting propensities of the victim. He suggested that, as many tribes arranged their hunts by forming a large circle and gradually concentrating so as to drive the game together, that it might more readily be killed, and as wars were considered "big hunts" only, so enemies were driven in a similar manner to one point, and the proceeds of the hunt eaten like game. The speaker further remarked that none of the southern tribes east of the Mis- sissippi river, as the Cheroki, Cha'ta-Maskoki, and Timucua, and none of the eastern Algonkins and Pani.s had ever been charged with being cannibals. It is a mistake to judge Indian customs from our half moral, half sentimental point of view, since many customs are quite natural to Indian psychology which are repugnant to our feelings. 122 TRANSACTIONS OF THE STONE IMPLEMENTS FROM NORTHWESTERN INDIA. The following communication was received from Mr. Rivett- Carnac, Ghazipur, India, with a collection of stone implements from northwestern India: During the past few years, Mr, J. Cockburn and myself have been fortunate enough to find stone implements in large quantities in Banda, a hilly district in the northwestern provinces of India. These implements consist chiefly of stone axes, or celts, of types well known in Europe. We have also found stone-hammers, ring- stones, and a variety of other implements, some of cosmopolitan types, and others unique. The celts found are upwards of 400 in number and are of two distinct types, polished and chipped, the former of diorite, and the latter of basalt. We are of opinion that both types were in use at the same time. Implements of true palaeolithic types, made of quartzite, occur scantily in the Banda district, but .are more numerous further south. The celts vary from 12}^ inches in length and 8 lbs. 3 oz. in weight, to 2^ inches in length and 3^ oz. in weight. The unique specimens of hammers, etc., and the largest and most remarkable of the celts have been presented by me to the British Museum. Sir P. Cunliffe-Owen, the well-known Director of the Kensington Museum, has, however, been good enough to cast the best specimens, and I hope later to send a complete series of colored fac-similes for your acceptance. In the meantime, groups representing the classes of celts found have been made up for presentation to the principal museums and scientific societies of Europe and the United States, and I do myself the honor of intimating that a case containing celts, etc., has been sent to your address, in the hope that they may be considered of sufficient interest to find a place in your museum. A few more specimens of spalls, or waste chips, flakes, and cores may be of value for comparison with similar objects from other countries. The chert was procured in nodules and bands in the Tirhowan limestone ; the agate, from the beds of streams which cut through the Rewah conglomerate, south of Banda. A larger collection of chert implements than any formerly made in India has been brought together by Mr. Cockburn, who will de- scribe them more fully hereafter. The ethnic affinities of the collec- ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 123 tion are, he points out, curious. On one hand, the scrapers and knives are of European types, as are also the mass of the celts. Then there are certain types which clearly resemble Silices, hitherto only found in Egypt by Jukes Brown.* A third type, apparently not common elsewhere (he designates them saw-backed knives) has recently been found in the Island of Melos. The coarser stone knives of quartz, sandstone, and basalt are not far removed from those used by the modern Australian sav- ages. The arrow-heads, as far as can be judged, come nearer the mul- titudinous American forms than any other; but the resemblance may rather be due to the comparatively large number of these implements which are known from America, and their comparative rarity in other countries. Some of the chert implements are of recent origin, and we have come to the conclusion that stone im- plements were probably in general use among the Kolairian, or Dravidian aborigines of this part of Bundelkhund, about 500 B. C, and that the use of stone among these people was not quite aban- doned as late as 600 A. D. A piece of sculpture representing an aboriginal armed with a stone axe, recently discovered at Kalinjar, is assigned to the seventh century after Christ. How far antecedent the use of stone may have been in this part of the country, no one will venture to guess, in the present state of our knowledge; but the majority of the implements have been found on the borders of the great Gangetic alluvial plain, itself of no great antiquity. The alluvium in this part of Bundelkhund is largely made up of decomposed basaltic rocks, which crop up here and there to the very margin of the Jumna. No doubt this river has had much to do with the level and adjustment of this alluvium. Some of the chert implements which are much weathered are, no dOubt, of vast antiquity; but the evidence, so far as it has been sifted, is in favor of the theory that the people corresponding to the palaeolithic men of Europe used excessively rude implements of jasper, quartzite, and basalt, rather than of chert, which was by no means abundant. Sixty-Eighth Regular Meeting, April 3d, 1883. Colonel Garrick Mallery, President, in the chair. * Journal of the Anthropological Institute, Gr. Brit., Vol. VII. 124 TRANSACTIONS OP THE The election of Mr. Thorvald SoLBfeRG, of the Library of Con- gress, as an active member; and Mr. Alton Howard Thompson, of Topeka, Kansas, as corresponding member, was announced. The Secretary reported, for the Curator, the gifts received since the last regular meeting : From the Author. — A memorandum-description of the finer speci- mens of Indian earthenware pots in the collection of the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society, Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. By Harrison Wright. Forming publication No. 4. Wilkes Barre, 1883. 8vo. Seven heliotype plates of vessels. From the Society. — M^moires de la Societe d'Histoire, d'Archeo- logie, et de Litterature de I'Arrondissement de Beaune, 1882. Rev. J. Owen Dorsey then read a paper entitled "Dakotan Legends and Myths." abstract. Some Omahas say that they have about three hundred myths. Of these, some are common to two or more tribes of the Dakotan or Siouan family. The following are found among the Omahas, Ponkas, and Dakotas : Ictinike's Adventures with the Turkeys, etc., (corresponding to the Dakotan myth of Unktomi and the Geese, and the Kansas myth of the Man-in-the-Moon and the Turkeys;) The Creation of the Rabbit's Son out of Clotted Blood, (the Blood- Clot's Boy of the Dakota;) and the adventures of the Rabbit's Son with Ictinike, resulting in the death of the latter. The following are common to the Omahas, Ponkas, and Otos: How the Rabbit killed the Black Bears ; How the Rabbit overcame the Muskrat ; How the Rabbit killed the Devouring Mountain ; An Adventure of the Orphan as a Rabbit; How the Buzzard's Head was deprived of Feathers by Ictinike ; and the Adventures of the Chiefs Son with the Snake Woman and the Thunders. Parts of the last remind one of the story of the Fair Melusina, as given by Goethe. The following are told by the Omahas, Kansas, and Osages : How the Rabbit killed the Devouring Mountain, (the Osages call him the Orphan;) The Coyote and the Buffaloes; and The Raccoons and the Crawfish. Mythical explanations of phenomena were given. And then ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 125 followed the Omaha, Kansas, and Osage versions of the Raccoons and the Crawfish. Prof. Cyrus Thomas exhibited some tracings of pictographs from the pipe-stone quarry in Minnesota. Prof O. T. Mason then read a paper entitled "A Year in Anthropology," in which the prosecution of anthropologic work was reported under the headings in accordance with the author's scheme, which had been presented at a previous meeting, and sub- sequently printed in the American Naturalist. The main divisions are I. Anthropogeny. II. Archaeology. III. Anthropo-Biology. IV. Psychology. V. Glossology. VI. Ethnology. VII. Tech- nology. VIII. Sociology. IX. Mythology. X. Hexiology. XI. Instrumentalities of anthropologic research. Dr. Fletcher read a letter from Sir Rawson Rawson, of London, Chairman of the Anthropometrical Commission of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, addressed to Colonel Baxter, U. S. A., upon a supposed relation of stature to degrees of latitude. The writer had taken the tables of stature, "by States," from the "Statistics of the Provost Marshal General' s.Bureau," and re-arranged them in the geographical order of the States, his theory being that mean stature diminishes with progress southward from a "temperate latitude.*' To a table of half a million of men of different nativities taken into the armies of the United States under the draft, he had also added columns showing the percentage of "extremes of proportion." Dr. Fletcher commented upon these tables and expressed his disbelief in any conclusions as drawn by Sir Rawson from the pop- ulation of the United States, inasmuch as its mixed nativities and migratory habits rendered all such conclusions fallacious. It might be said, however, that there was a "tendency" to such an arrange- ment of stature by latitude as that proposed in the tables in ques- tion. An animated discussion followed, in which Messrs. Blodget, Smiley, Thomas, Riley, and others participated. 126 TRANSACTIONS OF THE Sixty-Ninth Regular Meeting, April 17th, 1883. Col. Garrick Mallery, President, in the Chair. The election of Mr. Gilbert Thompson, of the United States Geological Survey, and Prof. Alexander Graham Bell, to active membership, was announced. The death of Mr. John Green Mills was also announced. GIFTS. From Mr. Gatschet. — Stenographic report of the German An- thropological Society, XII Congress held at Regensburg, Aug. 8, 9, 10, 1881. Professor Mason, on behalf of the Council, reported the election of the following named gentlemen as Corresponding Members : By way of explanation, he remarked that the committee in charge of the matter had been greatly puzzled in making a distinction be- tween the Honorary and the Corresponding list of Foreign Mem- bers. Their only guide had been the publications of these gentle- men, which had fallen into their hands at the Smithsonian Institu- tion, the Surgeon General's Office, and the Bureau of Ethnology. It would be greatly preferable to unite the two lists. Those written as Corresponding Members were certainly highly esteemed, and those designated as Honorary would confer a great pleasure on our Society by correspondence. Benedikt, Moriz, Coblenz, Rhine-Prussia. Chavero, Senor Alfredo, Mexico, Mexico. Dawkins, Prof. W. Boyd, Manchester, England. Dawson, George, Montreal, Canada. ECKER, Prof. A., Freiburg, Baden. Faidherbe, Gen., Paris, France. FoNDOUCE, Paul Cazalis de, Montpellier, France. Galton, Francis, London, England. GozzADiNi, Count Giovanni, Bologna, Italy. Hartmann, Prof. Robert, Berlin, Prussia. Von Hellwald, Fr., Stuttgart, Wiirtemburg. HowiTT, Alf. W., Gippsland, Victoria. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 127 Keane, Augustus H., London, England. LeBon, Dr. GusTAV, Paris, France. Martin, Henri, Paris, France. MoNTELius, Dr. Oscar, Stockholm, Sweden. Nadaillac, Marquis de, Paris, France. Orozco y Berra, Don, Mexico, Mexico. Pinart, Alphonse, Panama. Reclus, Elisee, Paris, France. Stieda, Dr. LuDwiG, Dorpat, Russia. ToROK, Dr. Aurele de, Buda-Pesth, Hungary. Wankel, Dr. A., Blansko, Moravia. Whitmee, Rev. S. J., Dublin, Ireland. Zaborowski-Moindron, Count, Paris, France. Techmer, O. F., Leipzig, Germany. THE CARSON FOOTPRINTS. The Secretary stated that, at a recent meeting of the California Academy of Sciences, Dr. H. W. Harkness, a member of the com- mittee appointed during the summer of 1882 to examine and report upon the discovery of fossil foot-prints at Carson, Nevada, an- nounced the result of still more careful examinations of the tracks since that time. His later observations fully confirmed his pre- vious opinion that the tracks are those of a hitherto undescribed species of the genus homo, which he names Homo nevadensis, Hark- ness, basing the description solely upon the measurements of the impressions, length of steps, length of stride, the straddle, (or dis- tance between the rights and lefts,) and the angle of deviation from median line. Dr. Harkness also presented the provisional name of Cams carsonicus, for the supposed new species of wolf, only the faint impressions of the foot-prints of which were discovered. The Secretary expressed the opinion that no one was justified in presuming to describe new species upon such meagre evidence, and especially when the subject pertained to man. Prof. Mason said he was glad to know that Dr. Harkness had coupled his own name with the '' Nevada Man ; " and thought it time that the scheme proposed by Mortillet was adopted, so that 128 TRANSACTIONS OF THE all new discoveries or startling announcements would, in every in- stance, be coupled with their authors in a manner similar to that adopted in biologic nomenclature. Dr. W. J. Hoffman then read a paper entitled "Comparison of Eskimo Pictographs with those of other American Aborigines. ' ' For the graphic representation of ideas the various tribes of North American Indians have recourse to different materials upon which to display artistic skill. These substances are not entirely the result of choice, but the. selection of specific varieties may fre- quently be due to the scarcity of more desirable ones. That area of the United States formerly occupied by the several tribes constituting the Algonkian linguistic stock, abounds in rock carv- ings and records, a characteristic type and style of etching prevail- ing throughout, by which means the former extent of the distribu- tion of that stock can at present be recognized. The southwestern region comprising New Mexico, Arizona, southern Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California, also contains numerous remains of this kind, especially upon the walls of the numerous "dry washes" and canons. The Ojibwa resorted to birch bark upon which to depict their mnemonic records and personal exploits. The Indians of the plains generally use the dressed skins and robes of buffalo, while on the northwest coast, and in Alaska, ivory and wood are employed. These are the prevailing substances, deviations frequently occurring to suit the fancy of the artist or recorder. Rock carvings are generally found more or less abundant in regions occupied by sedentary tribes; while among the hunting tribes of the prairies, materials permitting of easy transportation are used almost exclusively. Upon both the eastern and western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, in southern California, pictographs of elaborate design, and cov- ering large areas of rock surface, have been found ; but none of them have yet been shown to be the work of any specific tribe. During the course of my investigations in California in the summer of 1882, under the auspices of the Bureau of Ethnology, I had occasion to visit some Indians at Tule River Agency, located near the head waters of the South Fork of Tulare river, where a pictographic record was discovered which had caused consideiable speculation among the few persons who had observed it. The Indians who at present occupy that region are of the Yokuts linguistic stock, and. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 129 according to their traditions, have resided in that country for at least a century. Their ancestors were ignorant of the authors of the pictographs, and had no idea of their import. The valley is very narrow, less than a quarter of a mile in width, and is hemmed in by high mountains on both sides. The region is full of immense bowlders, which have rolled down from the mountain slopes whence they became detached during the lapse of ages. An immense granite mass, measuring about thirty feet in length, twenty feet in height, and from twelve to fifteen feet through, is so broken that one of the lower quarters has slid from under the larger mass, so as to leave a passage way through the entire diameter., form- ing a sort of square chamber eight feet high and of about equal width. This passage runs in a northwest and southeast direction. The west wall of the chamber — that facing the east — has evidently been selected for its special fitness to receive the pictograph, as will be observed farther on. (Fig. i.) The drawings appear to have been pecked in outline with a piece of quartz or other material of similar hardness, the lines varying from a mere rugose surface to grooves one-third of an inch in depth. Where the greatest depth was attained, the coloring matter has been best preserved. Four colors were employed in this work : black, Naples yellow, white, and red ochre. Judging from customs still in vogue, the black was probably produced by mixing finely powdered charcoal or soot with clay. The yellow and red colors are undoubtedly compounds of iron, as traces of this mineral in ochreous forms are visible in various places throughout the valley. The white pig- ment seems to be an infusorial earth. Upon a small, rounded bowlder at one end of the chamber are several cup-shaped depres- sions, which served as mortars for grinding and preparing the colors for use. Traces of color still remain; and a thin, glazed surface appeared, which turned the point of a blade, upon my attempting its removal for analysis. Glue is prepared by the Indians at this day from the hoofs of antelope or deer, and also from the tail of the beaver. That the latter animal frequented this region at one time is evident from the representation of it upon the ceiling of the chamber. Pigments are mixed in a thin solution of glue, for the purpose of causing them to adhere more securely to the surface to which they are applied. In the present instance it appears that the drawings, after having 9 130 TRANSACTIONS OF THE been outlined, received a coating of color, which may have been hammered or rubbed with a sharp stone. The slight, almost invisi- ble fissures in the partly fractured crystals composing the rock show that the coloring matter had penetrated below the natural surface. t yt^^r/^ Fig. I. Pictograph on a granite bowlder, on the South Fork of Tulare river, Cal. As a rock painting, this example is the finest yet reported from this country ; and the attempt at reproducing gestures of an almost universal frequency is also unique, considering the material upon which the record was made. The following interpretation is sub- mitted, first, of the individual characters; and, second, of the in- formation which the entire group appears to convey, and for which it was evidently intended. No. I represents a person weeping. The arms and hands termi- nating in pendent fingers represent a common Indian gesture for rain; the lines drawn from the eyes downward to the breasts signify fears, weeping; a short distance below each line are three short lines, probably indicating the downward movement of the hands with pendent fingers past the face, as the common gesture for tears, weeping, is made, literally signifying, in gesture parlance, eye-rain. It is evident that the recorder intended to convey the idea that sorrow was felt by the person drawn, on account of the sufferings of others of the tribe shown in connection herewith. Nos. 2, 3, and 4 are six individuals of different degrees of social status, as shown by the varying length of the warriors' plumes, ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 131 each of whom is represented in the act of making the sign for hunger, by passing the hands toward and backward from the sides of the body, denoting a "gnawing sensation," as expressed by the Indians. No. 4 probably denotes one who has already died of starvation, as he also makes the gesture for hunger, and is drawn in a horizontal position, a custom of indicating a dead man also found to exist among some of the Algonkins, especially the Blackfeet and Ojibwa. Nos. 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 are shown as making the sign for nega- tion, a natural and almost universal gesture made by throwing one or both hands horizontally outward from the body toward the right and left. The fingers are extended, and, to make the gesture more emphatic, it almost appears as if the artist had drawn the toes similarly separated, as shown in Nos. 5, 6, and 7. The ornaments on the legs in No. 9 probably are meant for the trimmings upon the leggings. No. 10, with the right hand and arm brought to the body, to in- dicate self, and the left extended to indicate direction, to go, signi- fies that the group contemplate going away. Now, since, as before stated, the face of the rock upon which the pictograph occurs runs northwest and southeast, the extended arm, pointing in the former direction, indicates that the course' to be taken is that way. This belief is strengthened by the fact that bowlders having equally good surfaces for such a record are abundant, though no others were found of which the direction was suitable for showing the course to be taken, which it appeared necessary to do in this figure. No. II is an ornamented head, with body and legs having an indefinite termination. The only interpretation that can be offered is that it represents a Shaman. The above pictograph covers an area measuring about eight feet in height, and between twelve and fifteen feet in length, the latter being the transverse diameter of the bowlder. The largest figure, No. I, is about six feet in length, the remaining figures are in pro- portion, as represented in the illustration. Similar rock pictures are said to occur about fifteen or twenty miles northwest of this locality, and at a point about ten miles northeast ; though I had no opportunity to personally examine their appearance and condition, or to note whether there was any rela- tionship existing between all of them as to general import and artistic design. 132 TRANSACTIONS OP THE It appears from a study of this pictograph that the people who made it had come to this locality as the advance party of a tribe in search of a better country, and, after a residence of an indefi- nite period, found that the subsistence necessary for the support of their tribe was not to be obtained. The record also appears as a notice to their successors to hasten their travels in the direction in- dicated toward the northwest. That game and vegetable food were not in sufficient abundance is inferred from the elaborate representation of various plants, insects, and birds, upon the ceiling of the chamber, all directed towards the pictograph upon the side wall. Between the two series are a bald eagle and a beaver, accurately drawn, both transversely, and apparently heading off the other objects, the eagle before the birds and small animals, and the beaver in front of the plants and in- sects. To further illustrate the reproduction of gestures in pictographs, I shall present a few examples taken from specimens in the museum of the Alaskan Commercial Co., of San Francisco, California, and from drawings prepared by an Alaskan Indian whom I met in that city during the summer of 1882. The latter are in imitation of drawings made upon wooden slats, to give notice of departure from home. The strip of wood upon which the figures are drawn is placed at the door, or upon the roof, and 'so secured that one end inclines in the direction taken by the maker, who is also the occupant of the dwelling. (Fig. 2.) w J/ n Fig. 2. Innuit drawing on wood ; two-thirds natural size. No. I. The speaker, with his right hand indicating himself, and with his left pointing in the direction to be taken. No. 2. Holding a boat paddle, signifying that he is going by boat. No. 3. The right hand placed to the side of the head to denote sleep, and the left, with one finger elevated, to signify one, viz : one night. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 133 No. No. No. No. No. No. No. 4. The island where he proposes to spend one night. The central spots denote habitations. Repetition of No. i. Another island, apparently uninhabited. Repetition of No. 3, with the addition of having two fingers elevated to show that he intends to rest two nights. No. 8. The recorder with his harpoon, making the gesture for sea lion with the left hand. (This sign is made by placing the flat hand edgewise, with the thumb extended and elevated, then pushed outward and downward in a slight curve.) A sea lion. Shooting with a bow and arrow. A canoe with two persons, the lower projections represent- ing the oars. This signifies that after the object of the journey has been attained, he will return. No. 12. The recorder's house toward which his boat is directed. This interpretation was also given to me in gesture language, as well as in the Ki'ate'/amut dialect of the Innuit language, of which the following is the text, with literal translation : 9- 10. JtlUl I there ta-wa -ut [to that place] ai-wi -/a-na go [by boat] kui-gi'-qta-mun, that island, a-/i-lu'-muk one ka-wa'-/a-lu'-a, sleep [night] there, tca-li' then hui I ai-wi'-lu-a go a-^a-mun (to) another kui-gi'-qta-mun, that island, ta-wa'-ni there ma-lu'-qniik two ka-wa-;ifa-lu'-a, sleeps [nights], hui I pi-qlu-a catch a-/i-lu'-muk one wi-fia'-muk' sea lion tca-li' then a-ni-/lu'-a return nu'-nan [to] place m'nun. mine. 134 TRANSACTIONS OF THE In the above text, as well as in others herewith submitted, c represents the sound of sh; / the sound of ch, in the German word ach, nacht; and q the sound of/ in Spanish mujer. Vowels have continental pronunciation. Another example, obtained under similar circumstances to the preceding, further illustrates the drawing of gestures. (Fig. 3.) 123456 7 8 Fig. 3. Innuit drawing on wood ; two-thirds natural size. Nos. I, 3, 5, 7 represent the same person addressed. His being armless evidently shows his passive state in the record. No. 2 indicates the speaker, his right hand being placed against his body to denote self, 1 ; the left hand is raised and points in the direction he is to take. No. 4. The elevation of both hands with fingers and thumbs ex- tended and separated, denotes many, according to my in- formant. It might as well signify ten ; but the increased size of the hand is evidently intended as a superlative, as this method was adopted by the ancient Mexicans to de- note plurality, and also appears to exist among the Ojibwa to signify increased quantity. No 6. The right hand placed to the head denotes sleep. Nos. 4 and 6 indicate, therefore, many sleeps, or, in other words, many days and nights. The left hand is directed down- ward and outward, meaning at that place, which he pro- poses to visit or has visited. No. 8. The right hand is directed toward the starting point; while the left arm is brought inward, pointing over the head, to signify that he intends to come back to the place indi- cated. The above may be summed thus : I am going away to remain many days; after which I shall return. The following is the Kiate- ;famet text, with literal translations : Hui a-qtei'kua a-;ifla'mun I go (to) another nu-na'-mun am-lic'-ka-mu'-ik settlement many ANTHROPOLOaiCAL SOCIETY. 135 ha-wa'-/a-lu-a ta-wa'-ni tca-li' hui sleeps there then I a-ni-glu'-a. return. The accompanying illustration represents one method of notify- ing passing friends of the destitute condition of the occupants of a lodge. (Fig. 4.) The drawing is made on the smooth surface of a strip of wood ; the lower end is stuck in the ground at a conspicuous point in the road or trail, so that the top points toward the house. "" 'k f^^^ Fig. 4. Innuit drawing on wood ; one-half natural size. No. I. Denotes the baidarka, or skin canoe, showing the recorder to be a fisherman. No. 2. Is an individual with both hands thrown outward from the body, corresponding to the common gesture for negation, nothing. This is similar to the characters upon the Cali- fornian pictograph. No. 3. Another human figure with one hand placed to the mouth, signifying to eat,- the left being directed to — No. 4. The habitation. The whole signifies that there is nothing to eat in that house. The representation of the gesture for negation, nothing, as here given, is similar to Nos. 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 of the Californian picto- graph above mentioned. In representing a person dead or killed, the style of drawing by the Alaskans is very similar to that of the Ojibwa. Frequently, as in some rock carvings attributed to the Blackfeet, we observe simply a horizontal line for either idea; if the person has been killed, the manner in which death was caused is generally repre- sented, as by the bow and arrow, the spear, or by decapitation after being wounded. Headless bodies are found in many of the carv- ings from Alaska, and also upon the bark scrolls of the Ojibwa, a figure in the latter condition being represented in the accompany- ing sketch of a record taken from an Ojibwa pipe stem. (Fig. 5.) I venture to submit an interpretation, based upon a knowledge of 136 TRANSACTIONS OP THE most of the characters obtained at various times and of which the signification is known. The topmost figure is a bear, colored blue in the original, and probably relates to the gens of which the recorder, or subject of the record, is a mem- ber. A heart drawn above the line extending backward from the mouth usually indicates brav- ery, and it is presumed that three hearts in the AAA A A present instance imply provocation or anger. The second figure, consisting of a circle, per- haps a shield, upon which is drawn a triradiate character, has reference to the personal totem of the individual. The central figure resembles, to some extent, a character frequently met with to signify stars, though in that case the lines connect the small discs and do not concentrate at any given point, as in the present instance. The seven angular characters represent the lodges of the village where the recorder lived, and immediately beneath them is shown a waving band from left to right, signifying that the village was located near a river. Beneath this are two persons, each grasping a gun with the left hand, and a third holding a spear, all of whom are members of the tortoise gens, as shown by the representation of that reptile in the same space. The upward curve, extending from side to side, is the sky; and the rayed circle immediately below the left ex- tremity signifies that the sun was at that point of the sky when the fact narrated occurred. This Fig. 5. Oiibwa . . . , , . \ . \ mterpretation is based upon the custom common record on pipestem ; ^ ^ one-half nat. size, ^o almost all tribes of facing the south when making the several gestures for day, or the dif- ferent periods of a day, and beginning with the right hand at the eastern, or left hand side. Even when the points of the compass are not observed the gesture is always made from the left to the right. Hence it is to be inferred that the pictograph refers to early morning. The headless character below the sun ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 137 denotes the victim, who was a woman, as is shown by the skirt. The figure of a crane shows that she belonged to the crane gens. In the next figure of a bear, the hearts are beneath the line con- nected with the mouth, signifying sorrow. The reversed position also seems to denote that the perpetrator of the deed experienced remorse, and offered the sacred pipe, the last figure, to appease the wrath of the Great Spirit. From the above it is evident that a warrior of the Bear gens, in company with three of the Tortoise gens, for some reason or other, killed a woman of the Crane gens early one morning. Whether the murder was intentional — as appears to be the case from the position of the hearts in the first figure — or accidental, remorse was felt, and an offering made. A similar custom of drawing a headless body, to signify death, is also found among the Eskimo, and an illustration is presented herewith which was copied from the original sketch on walrus ivory, (Fig. 6,) now in the collection of the Alaska Commercial Com- pany of San Francisco, California. Fig. 6. Innuit carving on ivory. The left-hand figure, resembling a long handled fan surmounted by the image of a bird, is a "Shaman stick," or more properly, perhaps, a votive offering, or a grave stick, as it is termed by some Indians. The middle figure, that of a headless man, denotes the person who had been killed. In his right hand is a spear or harpoon. The right-hand figure signifies the person who committed the murder. His hand and arm are in the position of the termination of the gesture to kill, which is made by thrusting the closed hand earthward before the body. To prevent his having ill luck in hunt- ing and fishing, and to appease the anger of the spirit of the departed, he has erected a "Shaman stick," placing upon it the emblem of a bird, the best that can be offered. The belief prevails that flying gods are good ones, and such as crawl or swim, evil ones. The interpretation given in the Aigalu;^amut dialect of the 138 TRANSACTIONS OF THE southern Innuit will explain the character of the pictograph more fully, and serve also to show what a native can learn from a simple record. Nu-na'-mu-quk' aV-l-;fik' Place to quarrel ai'-ba-li to-qgu'-qlu-gu' nu'-hu (with) one another (one) killed him (the other] 1 (with a) large tcuk nac-qui' glu-gu' knife took head off i-no'-qtclu-gu ga-sa'ha-lik' laid him down (buried) Shaman na-bon' ca-gu'-luk a- •gu'-nu-qua-glu-hu' stick bird to set (or place) on the top of (upon) A personal exploit, recording the death of an enemy by an arrow at the hands of the recorder, is given in the accompanying sketch, (Fig. 7,) reproduced from an Eskimo carved implement in the Fig. 7. Innuit carving on ivory. museum of the Alaska Commercial Company. In this instance neither the absence of the head, nor any other method of showing death, as the erection of a "grave stick," was necessary, since the weapon which produces that effect was sufficient. Fig. 8. Ojibwa sketch on bark. Although the Ojibwa usually represent a dead man by draw- ing his totem in an inverted position upon the grave post, an ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 139 animal which has been killed is shown in an ingenious manner in the accompanying illustration, (Fig. 8,) copied from a bark scroll which was obtained from the Indians at Red Lake, Minnesota. A moose was wounded in one of the fore legs, which is shown by the introduction into that extremity of a small peg of wood. This caused the animal to travel so slowly that it was finally overtaken and shot in the heart with an arrow and killed, as shown by the quill, the shaft of which penetrates the heart. As this method of recording transactions and events upon birch- bark scrolls has been almost, if not entirely, discontinued, it is of the utmost importance to visit the various bands of the Ojibwa in order to collect such examples as may still be preserved with religious care, and in order to obtain interpretations of every form and variety of characters from the older and better informed Indians who may still be familiar with these interesting methods of picto- graphic representation. The value of immediate investigation and comparison can be fully realized from the fact that there are tribes now living who have entirely forgotten such methods of delineation, although their association and mtercommunication with the whites date from a later period of time than that of the Ojibwa. Finally, the death of an individual may be signified by the pres- ence of a grave stick or " Shaman stick," without any other indica- tions. This is shown in the annexed sketch, (Fig. 9,) copied from an ivory implement in the museum above mentioned. In this Fig. 9. Innuit carving on ivory. instance, the survivor is shown holding on to the corner of the house with one hand, and with the other indicating the position of the individual — under ground — to whose memory he erected the offering. The deceased was one who shared his house, and was rather a fellow hunter than his spouse, as in the latter case a board showing articles of daily use would have been erected, the top pre- senting a rounded termination upon which would have been out- lines of a woman's face. The following illustration, (Fig. 10,) forming one of several 140 TRANSACTIONS OF THE records of a personal nature, was copied from an ivory bow used in making fire, in the museum of the Alaska Commercial Company, of San F]-ancisco. I was assisted in the interpretation of the most obscure portions of the narrative by a Kadiak mixed-blood, who was fortunately discovered in that city during the time of my in- vestigations. A represents one-half of the entire length of the bow, and shows the beginning of the narrative. B and C are continuous, though upon another face of the bow. The explanations of the characters are here given : I. A baidarka, or skin boat, placed upon poles for drying. 2. A winter habitation, known by being round topped. 3. A tree. 4. Winter habitations. 5. A store house. 6. A tree. 7. A store house. The rod connecting the latter with the tree, and another extending from the tree to No. 5, are placed in this position for drying fish. The entire series from i to 7 represents a village or settlement, the home of the narrator. 8. The hunter, or narrator, sitting on the ground in an attitude of supplication. He is asking the Shaman for success in the chase. 9. The Shaman. Incantations are per- formed by making short circular movements with the hands, above and on either side of the head. A Shaman is always drawn with one or both hands elevated, and the gesture for this personage is made as if he were performing such ceremonies. In the present instance the left arm is still raised, while the right is extended toward the suppli- cant, signifying that the request has been granted. 10. The Shaman's winter lodge. 11. Trees surrounding the habitations of this indi- vidual. 12. The Shaman's summer habitation. 13. Trees in the vicinity of the houses. Another side of the bow presents the result of the chase, viz : B. 14. A tree near the hunter's lodge. 15. The hunter's lodge. The desired success having been granted, the personal totem, or per- haps tutelar god of the hunter, is erected upon the roof of the habita- tion, as a mark of gratification and to insure greater success in the un- dertaking. The character could not be identified specifically, and may be unintelligible to any one save the hunter who adopted it, per- haps on account of its representing a mythical animal. 16. The hunter in the act of shooting. 17, 18. The game encountered, consisting of five deer. 19. The demon sent out by the Shaman to drive game in the way of the hunter. 20-23. Assistants to the demon. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 141 > Q W S c ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 143 C presents the fact that the hunter had previously applied to another Shaman for aid, but was refused, and the animals were bidden to depart and not permit themselves to be discovered. 24. A tree near the Shaman's lodge. 25. The Shaman standing upon the roof of the lodge, having just concluded his incanta- tions, the left arm being raised as if to drive back the approaching game, while the right arm is brought earthward and rather more toward his person. In giving the arm is directed more toward the supplicant than in the present instance. 26. Deer, which had ap- proached during the incantations, the first one having already turned about with a rather crest-fallen appearance. 27. Horns of a deer protruding above the water of a stream across which it is swimming. 28. Young deer. Recognized by smaller body and long legs. The following text in the Ki'ate'/amut dialect, with literal trans- lation, is of interest as showing both the syntactical structure, and the order in which the same narrative was given in gesture language : Nu-num'-cu-a Settlement man u-/la'-qa came pi-cu'-qi-a hunting ku'-da ku-lu'-ni ka-/a'-qa-luk' go wanted (to) (and) Shaman (he) asked ka'-/la-qlum' Shaman mi-na'-qa-lu-qu' gave to him ta-/li'-mu-nijk tu-du'-ia-niik fire deer ka'-;/la'-luk u'-qli-ni u"-i-lum' Shaman went to top of lodge kai'-na-nun' (where) standing on top ka-/a'-hu-pi-gu' he made spirits (incantations) i'-u-ni au'-qkua-glu-hii' devil (was) sent to him (the hunter) te'-itc-lu-gi' (and) brought ta-;fli'-mu-nuk' five tun-du'-ia-mik tau'-na-cuk deer same man pi-/lu-ni' he caught ta-;^li'-mu-niik' five tun-du'-ia-/a-nuk' deer [//. /orw] tu^-gu-;fli'-u-qi killed 144 TRANSACTIONS OF THE a-;fli'-lum Another tu-mu'-qtcu-gi' did not grant request ka'-;^la-qlum' Shaman Another narrative from the same locality presents the manner of recording success in the chase. The animals are not as well drawn as those upon more recent ivory workmanship, and the specimen from which the annexed figures were copied appears to be a very old one. (Fig. ii.) The story is to the effect that the recorder desired the number and variety of animals drawn ; those having their heads directed toward the lodge are the ones which he secured, while those with their heads turned away are others which he desired but which he did not get. The drawing in the original is continuous, but has here been divided; therefore, to understand the context, the left-hand end of D should be joined to the right-hand end of E. The following is an explanation of the several characters : I. The hunter whose success is depicted. 2. Winter habitation, with smoke issuing from the opening in the roof. The cross-piece of wood, supported by two vertical poles, is used for drying skins and fish. 3. The hunter's companion. 4, 5, 6. Three beavers. 7. A porcupine. 8, 9. Deer. 10. A wolf. 11. A seal. 12. A wal- rus. 13. A fox. 14. A'bear. 15. A land otter. 16. A weasel, according to the interpretation given, although there are no specific characters by which it could be distinguished from the succeeding figures. 17, 18, 19, 20, 21. Martens. Ki'ate'/amut Text. Hui'- nu-na'-gra I (from) my place pi-cu'-qu-lu'-a hunting pa-mu'-qtu-lit' martens a-/la-luk' one a-;fla-luk' one ta-hi'-men five a'-qui-a'-miik land otter ku-qu'-lu'-nu-muk wolf hui'-pu-qtu'-a I went mus'-qu-li'-qnut (for) skins of animals a-mi'-da-duk' weasel pi-qu'-a caught a-/la-luk' one ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 145 tun'-du-muk tu'-gu-qli'-u-gu' deer I killed me-lu'-ga-nuk' pe'-luk pi-nai'-u-nuk two beavers three nu'-nuk pit'-qu-ni' ma-klak'-muk porcupine I caught none seal pit'-qu-ni' a-ci'-a-na-muk pit'-qu-ni' I caught none walrus I caught none wa-qi'-la-muk pit'-qu-ni' ta-gu'-/a-muk fox I caught none bear pit'-qu-ni' I caught none The same narrative was also given in gesture signs, and the text shows the exact order of their execution and sequence, a result not often obtained when comparing sentences given in both oral and ges- ture language by other tribes south of the forty-ninth parallel of latitude. The accompanying drawing, (Fig. 12,) was also copied from a piece of walrus ivory in the museum of the Alaska Commercial Co., of San Francisco, California. The carving was made by a Kiate'/amut Indian of southern Alaska, and represents the success of a Shaman in curing two patients. : ^y-jt^ ^ySBBgT^ 7 6 ' 5 4 3 2 Fig. 12. Innuit carving on walrus ivory. The following explanation of the several characters will suffice : I, 2. A Shaman's summer habitation, showing trees growing in the vicinity. The fact of their being placed upon the houses denotes that the houses stand in the shade. 3. The Shaman, who is repre- sented in the act of holding one of his "demons" in reserve, to aid in the expulsion of the disease should the previous treatment fail. According to the natives, the sick are possessed of "devils," who will duly leave the body at the approach of a superior demon, such as the Shaman is believed to control. 4. The Shaman's de- 146 TRANSACTIONS OF THE mon. 5. The same Shaman, going through the preliminary per- formance of exorcising the demons that cause the sickness of the two patients. 6, 7. Men who have just been relieved of sickness. 8. Two evil spirits fleeing from the bodies of the patients under manipulation by the Shaman. From the large amount of pictographic material examined thus far, both upon the rocks in the various portions of the United States, where they were originally designed, and on various sub- stances now preserved in both public and private collections, I can safely state that the work of the Eskimo is greatly superior to that of any other in the faithful delineation of natural objects, especially of animate forms. The Ojibwa bark records are probably next in order ; but, on account of the introduction of mythical beings and mnemonic characters, the only means of obtaining interpretations is a thorough knowledge of their ceremonies and mythology. This is applicable also in the study of pictographs of other tribes ; though it is evident that in many instances an intimate acquaint- ance with the gesture language, or I might with more propriety say the several gesture dialects, will be of more value, since the attempted reproduction of gestures and signs is of constant occur- rence. Of the latter class the California pictograph already men- tioned is an excellent example. The same advancement in record- ing the gesture language is also noticed in many of the Eskimo drawings. The Chinese characters, the Egyptian hieroglyphs, and some of the Maya and Mexican drawings show abundant evidence of having originated in pictographic delineation of objects and actions. It is chiefly in the representation of subjective ideas that the aboriginal artist fails; but when the lines and curves corresponding, to the movements of the hands in gesture were once delineated, one of the greatest obstacles in the graphic representation of ideas was overcome, and we may therefore conclude that a careful study of the gesture signs and their comparison with pictographs will lead to the surest results. Mr. DoRSEY, in referring to the fact that demons were supposed to aid the Shaman in bringing game in the way of the favored hunter, stated that the Kansas represent upon their mythologic chart a "venerable man," who is supposed to go out and call in the game. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 147 Mr. Jeremiah Curtin then read a paper on "Illustrations of Mythology from Slav and Magyar Folk-lore." abstract. Folk-lore is the entire stock of wisdom accumulated by the un- lettered masses of mankind in all ages and nations. Like language, it is the product neither of one mind nor a given number of minds, but of all the various groups which, together, form humanity; like language, it is in the possession of all men, common property be- queathed by anonymous ancestors or predecessors. As there is no nation, tribe, or group of persons without language, there is none without folk-lore, which, in a broad sense, is the fruit of the intel- lectual activity of men before they are modified by what is called education, and represents their religion, philosophy, and literature, if the latter term may be used with reference to people unacquainted with letters. The first illustration was taken from the Magyar story of Mirko, the King's Son, in which a sword moves continually and cuts on every side, guarding the hero while asleep, so that a fly cannot reach him; this sword has its parallel in the sword of the 3d chapter of Genesis, last verse, "which turned every way to keep the way of the Tree of Life." The most characteristic incident of the story is that of turning a diamond castle into an apple, and then turning the apple back into a castle after the hero returns home. A similar case is found in the Russian story, Dawn, Twilight, and Midnight, where each of the three kingdoms of Gold, Silver, and Copper shrinks into an egg, is carried away in the pocket of a woman, and becomes a kingdom again at her desire, which is a process similar to that of making an acorn a tree in a few minutes, and then turning the tree into an acorn again, or like that in the 2d Book of Kings, 20th chap., where it is stated that the sun was turned back 10 de- grees as a sign to King Hezekiah that he would recover from his illness. In all these cases the same principle is involved, namely, that of reversing the direction of forces now acting in the universe, of going back to yesterday and last year, of undoing an accom- plished deed. Fate and predestination were illustrated from a Serbian tale, and the power of the word which creates and destroys, from Russian lore and the great feast, the Ramayana, produced by the prayers of the mighty sage Bharadwaja, who entertained an army of more than a million of men. 148 TRANSACTIONS OP THE DISCUSSION. Prof. Mason said that, so far as this combined learning of dif- ferent peoples was concerned, the whole world seemed akin. Prof. Thomas referred to the publication several years ago of a collection of myths of the New World, and also to a later publica- tion of hero myths, in the latter of which there are psychologic deductions at variance with the former. Dr. Fletcher then presented a scheme of nomenclature for the stature of the human body. After referring to the several methods which had been adopted, the classification of Professor Zoja was submitted for the considera- tion of the Society. Seventieth Regular Meeting, May ist, 1883. Col. Garrick Mallery, President, in the Chair. GIFTS. From the Society. — Proceedings of the Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences; being the part III of Vol. Ill, 1883. Bulletin of the Philosophical Society of Washington, Vol. IV, 1 88 1, and Vol. V, 1883. From the General Secretary of the Congres Internationale DES Americanistes. — A circular with reference to the gen- eral meeting to be held at Copenhagen during the coming summer. Mr. Gatschet then read a paper on the SHETIMASHA INDIANS OF ST. MARV's PARISH, SOUTHERN LOUISIANA. The wide area of Louisiana was once the home of a large num- ber of Indian tribes, whose names and locations are mentioned by the historians of the early colonies. These Indians were distinct from each other in language as well as in race, and if an investiga- tor, of scientific attainments, had visited all of them 150 years ago, he would have probably discovered over forty dialects, belonging to at least eight linguistic families. Unfortunately, such a work was not undertaken at a time when it was possible to perform it, and all that we can do now is to collect the last remnants of a world of ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 149 speech. Even tkese are not free from foreign admixtures, and, as far as race is concerned, the majority of Louisiana Indians are no longer of pure blood. The Shetimasha Indians, often in deadly conflict with the Cha'hta tribes, are distinct from other Indians in language and in some racial peculiarities. The banks of Grand Lake (formerly also Lake of the Shetimasha) and Grand river, or Bayou Atchafalaya (called She'ti, Tche'ti, in their language) seem to have been their earliest known habitat. Some sixteen or eighteen of these Indians, still remain on Grand river and claim to own lands on it ; but the majority of the tribe, about thirty-five persons, live at Charenton, a village on the southern bank of Bayou Teche, St. Mary's Parish, not quite ten miles from the Gulf Coast. They have abandoned the tribal organization since the death of their chief, Alexander Dardin, in April, 1879. The present Shetimasha Indians earn their living exactly in the same manner as the French Creoles surrounding them. Too poor to run any of the large sugar plantations, with their expensive mills and other apparatus, and with the uncertainty of renting them, they prefer to earn wages in the service of the large sugar planters in summer-time, to raise some sugar-cane and kitchen vegetables for sale on the few acres which they own, to cut cypress timber in the swamps, (districts flooded in the rainy season,) and to manufac- ture baskets and other utensils. Articles like these are made by the women, who are hard workers and certainly more industrious than the men. About fifty-five Indians are all that now remain of this ancient tribe, and not more than one-half of these speak the Indian tongue, the rest using exclusively the Creole dialect of French. Every house contains quite a number of children, so that the tribe and even the language will not become extinct within a short time. But they have forgotten almost everything of importance concerning the history, traditions, wars, manners, and customs of their race. The oldest members of the tribe at the time I visited them (Decem- ber, 1881) were three women, from sixty to seventy years of age, who are probably the only pure-bloods among them, and are of a very dark cinnamon complexion. The oldest man was but fifty, and the per- son best acquainted with the ir antiquities is Baptiste Angelique, av old negro living on Grand ^ : jm several e\ nts mention by this hoary old si. I h joeii tiiabled 10 estaljlish some poin in the chronology he 'mash;: dMet's. H.iving r > distiiv 150 TRANSACTIONS OF THE idea of our mode of computing years, he stated that he was born nine years "before the Jackson war," and married when " the stars fell from the skies," which indications respectively point to 1805 and to the meteoric showers of 1833 or 1834. The aboriginal name which the Shetimasha give to themselves is Pa'ntch pinunkansh, "men altogether i-ed^ Of course, this name could not have originated before the advent of the whites and negroes; and, by the way, it may be noticed that the Indians of the Gulf States do not intermarry with the negro, while in the north — the Long Island Indians for instance — many tribes have done so extensively. Of the name Shetimasha, these Indians can give no ac- count, but state that the Alibamu Indians, living west of them, pro- nounce it Tchikemaha; the earliest French historians wrote Shyoute- macha, Tchoutymacha (1700), etc. Like the name of the Taensa tribe, their name is taken from the Cha'hta language; it means "they have cooking utensils ;''' tchuti meaning pot, vessel for boiling; and imasha, they possess, they own. For this etymology I am indebted to Allen Wright, Governor of the Cha'hta Nation, Indian Territory. The old French colonists were in the habit of visiting and de- scribing only the tribes whom they found settled on the high roads of travel and commerce, and thus our historic knowledge of many inland tribes is very fragmentary. Only the tribes on the Missis- sippi and Red rivers were fully noticed by the French chroniclers ; and had the Shetimasha not caused an aggressive movement of the French and their Indian allies by murdering the Na'ktche Missionary, Saint Cosme, in 1 706, on the Mississippi river, nothing besides their tribal name would have come down to us from the eighteenth cen- tury. Le Page du Pratz tells us that after a protracted warfare, the Shetimasha finally compromised the -difficulty by soliciting a peace- able settlement, and "chanting the calumet'' before one of the French commanders. The luxuriant vegetation of the country inhabited by these south- ern Indians has often been described by eloquent authors fully able to appreciate the beauties of nature. A semi-tropical sky over- arches that land, and its sultry climate produces all the plants, herbs, and fruits adapted to the luxuriant soil. The finest spectacle is presented by the gigantic live oak, the limbs of which begin to expand out of the vigorous trunk not far from the soil, rise to alti- tudes of 150 feet, and droop down their long gray mosses in pro- fusion. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 151 A correspondent of the New Orleans Times-Democrat writes of that part of Bayou Teche which lies between St. Martinsville and Breaux Bridge, where the live oaks on either bank are more dense than at any other point : "The scenery is wilder, as the cultivated places a:t most points are some hundred yards back from the water. The oaks, with here and there a monarch cypress, assume the most varied shapes and seemingly impossible attitudes — sometimes receding from the bank at an angle of fifty degrees, and a little further on stretching their rugged branches far out over the water. "There is little or no underbrush, and this affords delicious vistas through the heavy trunks back to the fields beyond. The oaks in their new garniture of fresh foliage, and patriarchal in their Moham- medan beards of gray, seem to laugh at the evanescent changes going on around them. Solid, strong, apparently eternal, they have stood their watch over the Teche, have sheltered the man-eat- ing Attakapas Indian and squaw, have waved their arms at the approach of the Acadian boats, as with measured stroke their sturdy navigators came slowly along to give new life to these prairies and awaken these forests to a day of plenty. The story of Evangeline is familiar to the people of the bayou. They point to the church at St. Martinsville as being situated on the site of the old edifice where she worshipped; and Longfellow's story has touched tender chords among those the history of whose ancestors he has so ten- derly written." Settlements of the Shetimasha, or Gens de la Fourche, (Bayou Lafourche,) existing about 1700. From Baptiste Angelique, and the last two from maps. (namu is village] tata, city, tchat, bayou.') I.. Tchat Kasitunshki, (better than the form Kawitunshki,) now Charenton, on Bayou Teche, southwest side of Grand Lake. 2. Amatpan namu. Bayou Gris, 3 miles east from Charenton, on the lake shore. 3. Net Pinu'nsh "Terre Rouge," 2 miles west from Charenton, on Bayou Teche. 4. Shoktangi hane hetchi'nsh, on an inlet of Grand Lake, about 3 miles north of Charenton. Their central house for religious dances and the burial ground of their chiefs was in this locality. Now it is the sugar plantation of Mr. Price. 152 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 5. Ne'kun si'snis, or "Round isle," opposite lie aux Oiseaux, in the Lac de la Fausse Pointe. 6. Hipinimtch namu, on the western part of Grand Lake, at the Fausse Pointe, near Bayou Gosselin, (hlpi, prairie, nimtch, road and portage. ) 7. Namu katsup. Bayou Chene village, St. Martin's parish. 8. Kushu'h namu, on Lake Mingaluak, near Bayou Chene; (ku-shu'h is Cottonwood tree.') 9. Kame naksh tchat namu, at Bayou du Plomb, a large Indian town, near Bayou Chene, 18 miles north of Charenton. 10. Tsa;ftsinshup. namu, on Grand river, near Plaquemine Bayou. 1 1 . Grosse Tete namu ; Indian name not remembered ; two miles from the Plaquemine village, Tsa/tsinshup namu. 12. Tchetin namu, east of Plaquemine, on Grand river, the name of which was Tcheti, Sheti, 20 miles east of Charenton. 13. Tchati Kutingi namu, at junction of Bayou Teche with Bayou Atchafalaya. 14. The site of Donaldsonville, Assension parish, on the west shore of the Mississippi river, was that of a Shetimasha village. The missionary, St. Cosme, was murdered there by the Shetimasha, in 1706. The present Indians know nothing of that settlement, nor of the following. 15. Mouth of Bayou Lafourche, (Tchat Na'/tsebu,) where it empties into the gulf. This bayou was probably held by the Sheti- masha in its whole length. In their aboriginal state the tribe supported themselves mainly by vegetable food ; but they also ate the products of the hunt, which con- sisted of deer and other smaller animals. The women had to provide for the household by collecting pistaches, wild beans, a plant called kupinu, (kantak in Cha'hta,) and another called woman's potatoes, the seed of the pond-lily (akta), grains of the palmetto, the rhizoma of the common Sagittaria, and that of the Sagittaria with the large leaf, persimmons, (plaquemine in Creole, nanu in Shetimasha,) wild grapes, cane-seed, and succu, (guspi in Shetimasha.) They also planted, to some extent, maize, sweet potatoes, and, after the arrival of the whites, wheat ; or procured these articles by exchang- ing their home-made baskets for them. The fishing in the lakes and bayous was done by the women, men, and boys ; not with nets, but only with hook and line. They Bshed at night just as often as during daytime. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 153 These Indians were strict monogamists, and the husband could remarry only when he had lost his wife by death.* The young women were severely beaten if they took any improper liberties with men of their acquaintance. I have not been able to find any proof of the existence of phratries and totems among the Sheti- masha; but there can be hardly any doubt that they once existed among them. The women must have exercised authority in the tribe, for, as late as this nineteenth century, two women, after the demise of their husbands, who had been village chiefs, succeeded them in this charge. The women had a peculiar method of fastening their infants in the cradle-boards. They rocked them in such a way that the fore- head was flattened, while the back of the head assumed a round shape by the rocking motion. This implies that the flattening pad, or short piece of wood, was fastened to the head only, and not at the same time to the cradle-board, as is done with the Pacific Coast Indians. The Shetimasha men wore the hair long, and fastened a piece of lead to the end of the tress behind for the purpose of keeping the head erect. They adorned themselves with much cai'e and artistic taste, and tattooed their legs, arms, and faces in wavy punctured lines. They sported necklaces, finger-rings, bracelets, nose-rings, and ear-rings. The warriors enjoyed a peculiar kind of distinction, as follows: Certain men, especially appointed for the purpose, had to paint the knees of the warriors with pulverized charcoal, and this was made to stick by scarifying the skin with the jaw of a small species of garfish until it began to bleed slightly, after which the coloring matter was rubbed on. This manipulation had to be repeated every year. The outward distinction of the chiefs consisted in the privilege of carrying a much larger tobacco pipe than the warriors, which they exhibited at the ceremony of chanting the calumet. The cabin in which they dwelt was also of larger size than those of the other Indians. The women wore their hair in plaits or tresses, ornamented with plumes. A portion of the hair was wound in a coil about the head * If there is any truth iu this statement, it forms a singular exception to the common practice in Indian conjugal customs, which are dictated by mere sensu- ality. 154 TRANSACTIONS OF THE and secured by pins. Their ornaments were bracelets, ear-rings, and finger-rings. In painting themselves they used only the red and white colors. The tribal dance-house, or "maison de valeur," intended for re- ligious dances, stood on a little bay of Grand Lake, about three miles northwest from the present village of Charenton. Like all other lodges, it was about twelve feet square, with a pointed roof, but it was surrounded with a picket fence. It contained nothing else but the garments of the dancers and th^ three kinds of paints used at this ceremony : the hapt, or vermilion paint, the kups, or black paint, and_ the kupshesh, or white paint. No idols, stuffed animals, perpetual fire, etc., were to be found in connection with it, as was the case with the temple of the Natchez people. They called this dance-house Shoktan gi hana hedshinsh ; all the other dance-houses, hana nedshamtuina. The place where it stood is now a sugar-field, and was called by the Creoles Graine-a-vol6e, from the nuphar plants growing in the vicinity. As there was only one meeting place of this description among all the Shetimasha, the participants gathered from all the sur- rounding lake settlements by canoes the day before the new moon. Men, women, and children flocked to the ceremony in large num- bers. The ceremony took place in honor of Kut-nahansh, or the Noon-Day Sun, and in summer time lasted longer than at other seasons of the year. The management was entrusted to leaders, (pekidshinsh,) who were provided with long wands, or poles. The men danced with the breech-clout on, the body painted red, and with feathers stuck in the ribbons encircling the head : gourd-rattles and the scratching of alligator skins furnished the music for the occasion. They fasted during the six days the dance lasted. When the ceremony was drawing to a close, they drank water in order to produce vomiting; and, after they had removed in this manner any impurities in their system, they began to eat heartily. Analogous to this is the custom of some tribes of the Jivaro family, on the Putumayo river : the men tickle their throats every morning to produce vomiting, and then take breakfast, considering it unwholesome to eat with even the least impurity in the stomach. The principal deity of the Shetimasha, as well as of most other American nations, was the Sun, although worshipped here under the special form of the Noon-Day Sun, Kut-Naha', which literally means the half circle, the circle or orbit half completed, the cul- minating sun. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 155 No other worship of the sun existed except that by dances, just like those celebrated at the initiation rites, which were performed by the men and women during a fast. An addition was, however, made to these dances : a huge cone of dry reeds, which was erected and set on fire at noon. Then the dance continued around it until the pile was consumed, which lasted about thirty minutes. All this took place at the communal lodge, or temple, called hana hedshinsh, on an inlet of Grand Lake. The Shetimasha had other divinities besides: the great devil, the little devil, and the last devil. I could learn nothing distinct about the nature of these, but probably one of them represented the Jack o'Lantern, or feu foldtre , then very frequent about the shores of Shetimasha Lake, around which their settlements were situated. The word for devil (nekd) means, also, witch, sorcerer, and witch- craft. The initiation of the boys had not the purpose of imparting to them certain mysteries concerning the worship of their main deity, the Noon-Day Sun, but simply aimed at making them insensible to the pangs of hunger and thirst. Dressed in breech-clouts, their heads adorned with feathers, ribbons, red paint, and small gourds, they had to dance for six days in the temple, while fasting and without tasting a drop of water, led by their ephori, or disciplina- rians. No female was allowed to approach, although they had access to the ceremonial dances at the new-moon festivity. In the vicinity of this communal lodge also were performed mortuary ceremonies. One year after the death of a head chief or of any of the village war chiefs, of whom there were four or five, their bones were dug up by a certain class of ministrants called turkey-buzzard men, ("ramasseurs d'os"; o'sh ha'tchna, in Shetimasha), the remaining flesh separated, the bones wrapped in a new and checquered mat, and brought to that lodge. The in- humation of these bones took place just before the beginning of the Kut-naha worshipping ceremony or dance. The people assembled there, walked six times around a blazing fire, after which the bones were placed into a mound. The widow and the male orphans of the deceased chief had to take part in the ceremonial dance. The burial of the common people was effected in the same way, one year after death ; but the inhumation of the bones took place at the village where they had died. We find this singular custom also among the Cha'hta and many other southern tribes, though the time assigned for it varied from one to five or ten years after death. 156 TRANSACTIONS OF THE Language. — Although my chief purpose in going south Was to study the Shetimasha language, I cannot give here a full account of it, for it would fill not less than one hundred pages. This language, of which no other dialects are known to exist now, is vocalic, and nasalizes its vowels to a small degree only. It has a profusion of declensional and conjugational endings, suffixes the personal pronouns to the finite verb, forms a passive voice, and seems to be extremely polysynthetic as far as derivation by suffixes is concerned. Ternary and quaternary compounds are not uncom- mon. The numerals show the decimal system of numeration, not the quinary one, which is the most common in the Indian languages spoken within the United States. For the pronoun thou they have one form to address common people, and another reverential one to address superiors, etc. Something of the kind is found also in the southern dialects of the Dakota family, as Ponka and Omaha. I will present here a list of derivatives added to the words of which they form compounds. This list is very instructiye for show- ing the mental processes which these Indians have followed in forming their ideas — the concrete as well as the abstract ones, akstegi', (i), purchased, bought; (2), wretched, miserable. Quite similar is the connection traceable between Ital. cattivo, French, che'tif, which mean miserable, but formerly meant captive, prisoner of war; the English caitiff", also derived from Latin captivus, has even assumed the moral signification of wicked, mischievous, like the Italian term, ga'mpa, ka'mpa, heavy, weighty; from this: ga'mpata metal, as tiny lead, ball, bullet. hu' lake; from this, hu'ta, pirogue, canoe; shu'sh-hu'ta, shushu'ta box; lit. "wooden canoe;" t'ep-hu'ta, steamboat, lit. ''fire- pirogue;" te'p-hu'ta-ne'gsh-apshtchu'ma, locomotive and rail- road train; lit. "steamboat traveling on the ground." ka'meki, ka'mkish, long, elongated; also means wolf; wa'shka'mkin ri.?iVs\^Vi, jackass, lit. "the small mule," "the small long animal." Cf.-o'sh, ku't. ka'nush, a Frenchman, or French Creole, of Louisiana, because the early French colonists of Louisiana came from the Canadian lakes, the countries inhabited by "Kanuciks." Ka'nush is not a Shetimasha term, ka'tchti, to drink; Ka'tchmish, conjurer. Shaman, is derived from this term, because he drinks the infusion of Cassine leaves, ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 157 (nuait, in Shetimasha,) to put himself in a stupor, and awakening from it predicts what he has seen. ki'sh, dog; kish-atin, horse, lit. "great dog." Kish-kushma'msh, Canadian; lit. "dog-eater." ki'pi, (i) flesh; (2) body of man, animal; (3) abbr. into -kip, -ki, a suffix equivalent to our -like, in womanlike, warlike, and also abbreviated into -ly (friendly, surly, for friendlike, sour-like); it also answers to the German suffix -lich and the Greek -ti8r^q, -lobri^. All of these originally meant body, flesh, kind, form, like the Shetimasha term kipi ; slbo'i in Greek, leik in Gothic, lie in Anglo-Saxon. ku, liquid, water; when nasalized, ku'", river, or ku'" atinsh, great river; mi-ku', milk; lit. "liquid of the breast or udder;" ku- Xff^,fire water, the interpretation of the Spanish aguardiente; ''to be drunk'''' is, to the Shetimasha Indian, to die of fire water; and in Aztec to die is often used for "to suffer;" ku'-yuks {\) panther, lit. "water -tiger ; " (2) domestic cat. Cf. ni'ku, under ne. ktjt, head; from this are derived ku'tku, hair, kuti', roof, "head(of house?)" ku't ma'kte ka'minsh, dolichocephalic skull; lit. "head long behind;" Kut-na'ha, the name of the chief national Deity, "half round," or "half head,*' as explained above. TikxvM, persimmon ; in Creole French, //(X^z/^z^/;^!?/ nanuati'nsh, apple; lit. "large persimmon." na'kshi, one who is in a hurry; and also warrior, brave ; na'ksh means war. In the Klamath of S. W. Oregon ki'losh means, one who makes bold gestures^ one wrathful, and also a bold warrior. nvc^, sweet potato, batate ; niip mestekan, lit. " batate altogether white," for turnip. ne', xA^earth, mud, land, country ; ne'gsh, on the ground ; net, tobacco, because its leaves grow near the ground; ne-witi, butte, mound; lit." thrown upearth;" ne hashpa'tchpa, brick; lit. "mud pulverized (and) baked;" ne' tsa'/tsa, salt^ lit. "sour earth;" tsa';ftsa, meaning here sour and sweet, because in both sensations a biting of the tongue is experienced ; ni'-ku, island, Y\t. "river land;" m'xash, portage ; contr. from ne-mish land road (of the canoes). o'sh, u'sh, turkey buzzard ; o'sh neka'mki, bat; lit. "long turkey buz- 158 TRANSACTIONS OP THE zard." The men placed in charge of sepultures one year after death bore the name of turkey buzzards; in Creole, honwies carancros ; in Shetimasha, o'sh-hatchna, the last term being equivalent to picking up. pe'kua, upper, superior; pe'kup, above, upland; pe'kuampa, slave, lit. "upland person," because the slaves or captives taken from the tribe were usually sold to the upland tribes. With us, the term slave embodies the name of the people which at one time furnished a number of slaves to the Germans, viz., the Slavic nations. pu'p, rabbit; means also one hundred. In some Polynesian languages, hair is used to designate the same idea ; in Chinese, many or a great many is expressed by ten; pu'p-ati'nsh sheep, lit. "large rabbit." sit, sea, ocean; situp ke'tangi, on the sea-shore. I am induced to derive sit from si'htgi, to smell, emit odor, through, the anal- ogy of Winnipeg, Winnebago, two Ojibwe terms referring to nauseous exhalation of lake shores, produced by putrescent organisms. From this verb is also siti, locust-tree (Robinia pseudacacia), a tree very fragrant in its blossoming season. te'p, fire; te'p she'sht, smoke; lit. "smoke of fire," as opposed to te'p net, ' '■ smoke of tobacco. " Cf. ku'-tep and te'p-huta under kue, hu'ta. Te'p is probably derived from the radix of te'pigsi, to place (wood) upon; in the same manner as we say to . build a fire; Cf. kum-tepa', cover; shu'sh-kum-tepa', wooden cover, lit. "wood placed upon;" te'p-shi, ashes; lit. "ashes of fire." ya/, ya'h, ya', (i) strong in body, corpulent, stout ; (2) grown up, adult; (3) German, from their stout exterior. An Irishman is to them a "stout man digging in the ground." shu'sh, wood, tree, plant; a'k-shush, cypress tree; shu'sh-tchi'sh, leaf; su'seks odshi'bu, opossum; lit. "wood hog; shusheya', fence, fenced enclosure ; shush'-amu, cotton; shush-wa'e, barrel. DISCUSSION. Col. Mallery and Prof. Mason both remarked the importance of the material upon which the present paper was based. Dr. Welling inquired whether the Shetimasha had come in close communication with the French, beside their intercourse with the Creoles; to which Mr. Gatschet replied that they were ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 159 rapidly losing their own language and adopting the Creole patois. In fact, when among themselves, they thought in French and spoke in Shetimasha. Mr. Gatschet then presented some examples of the patois, and remarked that only those familiar with classic French could understand these natives. MOUND DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES. This was the title of a paper read by Prof. Cyrus Thomas. It was accompanied by a map, showing in color the distribution of the several varieties of mounds, which were treated in groups, with theories as to their construction, etc. abstract. 1. Explain method of making map. — By counties. 2. Signification of colors. 3. Characters of mounds in different sections. 4. I take for granted that the mound-builders were Indians. /. — Inferences to be drawn from the map. 1. That the advent of mound-builders was not from the Atlantic Coast. 2. That the Iroquois came from north of the St. Lawrence. 3. That those of the lower Mississippi section entered from the west, and their movement was north or south along the river. 4. That those of the Gulf States came from the west, moving east,- (or through Florida, moving west.) 5. That those of the middle Mississippi region came from the west or northwest, or possibly through Michigan. a. It is possible the Delawares and kindred Illinois tribes came from the north of the lakes; the latter breaking off north of Lake Huron or Ontario, crossing southward into Michigan, while the former continued eastward, crossing the St. Lawrence, thence moving southward. 6. That those of Ohio were the earliest of the mound-builders, and probably were driven southward into east Tennessee and North Carolina. a. That it is probable the southward movement was commenced 160 TRANSACTIONS OF THE by pressure of the Cat or Erie nation, and completed by pressure of the Iroquois. b. Azatlan in Wisconsin possibly a colony. 7. That the builders of the Effigy mounds of Wisconsin were prob- ably remnants of different tribes driven into this region by pressure from the south and west. 8. That the tribes of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina were possibly the predecessors of the mound- builders, driven eastward by their incursion. II. — Secondary Deductions. 1. That the main stream which poured into the northern sections came from the northwest, partly along the north side of the lakes, partly between them, and partly around the west end. If so, mounds may possibly be found along the Red River of the North and north of the lakes. 2. That those of the southern section are off-shoots from the stream which found its way into the Rocky Mountain region. 3. But all this gives us no clue to the origin of mound-building. DISCUSSION. A short discussion followed which was participated in by the President, Prof. Mason, and others, when the Society adjourned. Seventy-First Regular Meeting, May 15th, 1883. Colonel Garrick Mallery, President, in the chair. The election of John J. McElhone as an active member was announced. Letters were also read, acknowledging their election to Honorary Membership, from Prof. Busk, Sir Henry S. Maine, Prof. Sayce, Dr. John Beddoe, Prof. Carl Vogt, Sir John Lubbock, Prof. W. H. Flower, Mr. John Evans, Prof. Huxley, Prof. Quatre- fages, Prof. G. Cappellini, Prof. Cartailhac, Dr. Paul Topinard, and Prof. Worsaae. The Curator reported the receipt of a number of pamphlets, as follows : From Mr. John Evans. — On portions of a cranium and a jaw in the ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 161 slab containing the fossil remains of the Archseopteryx. London. 1881. - An address delivered in the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology, British Assoc. Adv. Sci. Liverpool. 1870. - Note on a weapon of stone found in a stone barrow at Pelyut. - Address on the present state of the Question of the Anti- quity of Man. - An address delivered to the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. London. 1878. - An address, etc. 1879. - Unwritten History, and How to Read it. London. 1882. - Note on a proposed International Code of Symbols for use in Archaeological Maps, n. d. Mr. W. H. Holmes read the following paper on THE USE OF THE CROSS SYMBOL BY THE ANCIENT AMERICANS. It is not my intention to raise the question of the origin of the cross symbol. Wise men have studied the problem in vain, and their answers have only tended to deepen the mystery. I desire simply to bring together a number of facts in regard to this symbol, in order to determine, if possible, something of its significance in the aboriginal art of America. Upwards of a dozen varieties of the cross are distinguished in the art of the Old World. Prominent among these are the Greek, the Latin, the Tau, the Fylfot, and the Crutch Crosses. The Greek Cross (Fig. i) is probably the most usual form, as it can be found in the art of nearly all nations. It is frequently en- closed in a circle, as shown in Fig. 2. Fig. I. Fig. 2. The Latin Cross, (Fig. 3,) so called because in great favor with the Latin races, has the lower arm much elongated. It is the cross II 162 TRANSACTIONS OF THE formerly employed in crucifixion. With Romanists it takes a variety of forms, some having but a single cross piece, while others have three or more. The elaboration of detail in these crosses is almost infinite. Fig. 3. The Tau (^Fig. 4) is one of the oldest known forms of the cross, being found among the sculptures of Nimroud and Egypt. It is said to have been regarded by the Druids as a symbol of God. It is found among Gnostic and Hebrew charms, and was an all potent sign with the Knights Templars. It has an important place in Christian art, and is very generally known as the Cross of St. An- thony. The Crutch Cross, or cross potent, consists of four of these crosses arranged about a centre, as shown in Fig. 5. ] nrzi n Fig. 4. Fig- 5- Probably the most singular of all the forms of this emblem is the Fylfot, or Four-footed Cross, Fig. 6, the hammer of Thor the Thunderer, the god of the Scandinavians. The emblem of this god, according to Jewett, was a thunderbolt; which was repre- sented by a hammer of gold, shaped like a cross, with arms more or less bent at the outer ends. It is a very ancient form, and it is not known what country or people gave it birth. It is embodied in the ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 163 art of Scandinavia and Denmark, and occurs frequently in both Celtic and Roman antiquities of Britain. It may be found on Roman and Etruscan pottery, and even on the porcelain of the ancient Chinese. It is of frequent occurrence on the ancient coins of nearly every country in Europe. 0 ^ Fig. 6. Fig. 7. A variety of this cross is made by curving the arms, as seen in Fig. 7 ; other forms are hardly less widely scattered over the Eastern continent. It is apparent from this slight review that an attempt to trace any of the American forms to a particular part or people of the East will be quite useless. All attempts to do so have signally failed, and we are compelled to look upon its occurrence in the two continents as one of those strange analogies so often developed in the arts of peoples totally foreign to each other. The art of the ancient Americans will be found to furnish exam- ples of nearly every known form of the cross. If written history does not establish the fact that the cross had a place in our abor- iginal symbolism, we can turn to the pages of the great archaeologic record, where we find that it is intimately interwoven with concep- tions peculiar to the western continent. It is found associated with other prehistoric remains throughout nearly the entire length and breadth of America. It is found in Yucatan, in Mexico, and in Central America. It was reverenced in Paraguay and in Peru ; and the first Spanish explorers of Florida, Cibola, and California declare that the cross was an object of veneration in these places. In exploring the ancient remains of the United States many ex- amples of the cross have been brought to light : these have been casually described from time to time. I have the pleasure of presenting a number of new examples of this symbol obtained recently from the mounds and graves of the 164 TRANSACTIONS OF THE Mississippi Valley. These examples are nearly all engraved upon disks of shell which have been employed as pendant gorgets. In the study of these particular relics, one important fact in recent history should be kept constantly in mind. The first explorers were accompanied by Christian zealots, who spared no effort to root out the native superstitions and introduce a foreign religion, of which the cross was the all-important symbol. This emblem was gener- ally accepted by the savages as the only tangible feature of a new system of belief that was filled with subtleties too profound for their comprehension. As a result, the cross was at once introduced into the regalia of the natives; at first, probably in a European form and material, attached to a string of beads in the manner in which they had been accustomed to suspend their own trinkets and gorgets; but soon, no doubt, it was delineated by their own hands upon tablets of stone and copper and shell, in the place of their own peculiar conceptions. From the time of La Salle down to the extinction of the savage in the middle Mississippi province, the cross was kept constantly before him ; and its presence, in such remains as post-date the advent of the whites, may thus be accounted for. Year after year, as exploration goes on, articles of European manufacture are discovered in the most unexpected places; and we shall find it impossible to assign any single example of these crosses to a prehistoric period with the assurance that our statements will not some day be challenged. It is certainly unfortunate that the American origin of any work of art resembling European forms must rest forever under a cloud of suspicion. As long as a doubt exists in regard to the origin of a relic, it is useless to employ it in a discussion where important deductions are to be made. At the same time it should not be forgotten that the cross was undoubtedly used as a symbol by the prehistoric nations of the South, and con- sequently that it was probably also known in the North. A great majority of the relics associated with it in ancient mounds and burial places are undoubtedly aboriginal. In the case of the shell gorgets, the tablets themselves belong to an American type, and are highly characteristic of the ancient art of the Mississippi Val- ley. A majority of the designs engraved upon them are also char- acteristic of the same district. The workmanship is purely aborigi- nal. I have not seen a single example of engraving upon shell that suggested a foreign hand, or a design, with the exception of this one, that could claim a European derivation. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 165 A Study of the various designs associated with the cross in these gorgets will be very instructive and may enable us to form some idea of its place and importance as a symbol. In two cases it has been inscribed upon the backs of artistically engraved spiders, as shown in Fig. 8. This specimen was obtained from a mound in Fig. 8. Shell gorget with engraving of a spider and cross. St. Clair county, Illinois. It has been suggested that the cross may simply be a representation of the pretty well defined cross found upon the backs of some species of the genus Atta, but there appears to be good reason for believing otherwise. The cross here shown has a very highly conventionalized character, quite out of keeping with the realistic drawing of the insect, and, what is still more de- FlG. 9. Cross fflbm a shell gorget. cisive, it is identical with forms engraved upon other objects and associated with other symbols. The conclusion reached is that here, as elsewhere, the cross has a purely symbolic character. 166 TRANSACTIONS OF THE In Fig. 9 we have an example of the Fylfot Cross, which occurs upon the back of a spider engraved on a shell gorget, from the same locality as the preceding. In another case the cross is surrounded by a rectangular framework of lines, looped at the corners, and guarded by four mysterious birds. The example pre- sented in Fig. lo was obtained from a stone grave on the Cumber- land river, Tennessee. It is a shell gorget of the usual form. In the center is a symmetrical cross of the Greek type inclosed in a Fig. io. Shell gorget with a cross. circle. Outside of this are eight pointed pyramidal rays orna- mented with transverse lines. The whole design presents a remark- able combination of the two symbols, the cross and the sun. The outer portion is very interesting and of a character purely aborigi- nal. Fig. II. Cross from a shell gorget. The cross shown in Fig. ii is taken from a gorget similar to the one just described. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 167 The gorget presented in Fig. 1 2 belongs to the collection of Mr. F. M. Perrine, and was obtained from a mound in Union county, Illinois. It is a little more than three inches in diameter and has been ground down to a uniform thickness of about one-twelfth of of an inch. The surfaces are smooth, and the margin is carefully rounded and polished. Near the upper edge are two perforations for suspension. The cord passed between the holes on the con- cave side, wearing a shallow groove. On the convex side the cord marks extend upward and outward, indicating the usual method of suspension about the neck of the wearer. The cross which occu- pies the center of the concave face of the disk is quite simple. It Fig. 12. Shell gorget with cross, from a mound in Union couuty, 111. is partially inclosed on one side by a semicircular line, and has now no other definition than that given by four triangular perforations which separate the arms. The face of the cross is ornamented with six carelessly drawn incised lines, interlacing in the center, as shown in the cut — three extending along the arm to the right and three passing down the lower arm to the enclosing line. I 'have 168 TRANSACTIONS OF THE not been able to learn anything of the character of the interments with which this specimen was associated. The gorget shown in Fig. 13 contains a typical example of the cross of the mound builder. The border of the disk is plain, with the exception of the usual perforations at the top. The cross is enclosed in a carelessly drawn circle ; and the spaces between the arms, which in other examples are entirely cut out or filled with rays or other figures, are here decorated with a reticulated pat- FlG. 13. Shell gorget with cross, from a mound in Tennessee. tern. The lines which define the arms of the cross intersect in the middle of the disk. The square figure thus produced in the center contains a device that is probably significant. A double- curved or S-shaped incised line, widened at the ends, extends ob- FlG. 14. From a shell gorget, 111. Fig. 15. From a shell gorget, Tenn. Fig. 16. From a shell ornament, New York. liquely across the square from the right upper to the left lower corner. This figure appears to be an elementary or unfinished form of the device found in the center of some of the more elabo- ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 169 rately carved disks of shell. This specimen was obtained from a mound on Lick Creek, Tenn., and is now in the Peabody Museum. The drawing is somewhat inaccurate in detail, as it was made from a hastily executed pencil sketch. Other forms from Tennessee, Illinois, and New York are shown in Figs. 14, 15, and 16. The small gorget presented in Fig. 17 is of inferior workmanship, and the lines and dots seem to have a somewhat haphazard arrange- ment; The cross, which may or may not be significant, consists of two shallow irregular grooves, which intersect at right angles near the center of the disk and terminate near the border. There Fig. 17. Shell gorget with cross, from a mound, Tennessee. are indications of an irregular, somewhat broken, concentric line near the margin. A number of shallow conical pits have been drilled at rather irregular intervals over most of the surface. A tri- angular fragment is lost from the lower margin of the disk. This specimen was obtained from a mound on Lick Creek, East Tenn., by Mr. Dunning. In Fig. 18 I present a large fragment of a circular shell ornament, on the convex surface of which a very curious pattern has been engraved. The design, inclosed by a circle, represents a cross such as would be formed by two rectangular tablets or slips, slit longi- tudinally and interlaced at right angles to each other. Between the arms of the cross, in the spaces inclosed by the circular border line, are four annular nodes, having small conical depressions in 170 TRANSACTIONS OP THE Fig. i8. Shell gorget, from a mound on Fain's Island, Tennessee. Fig. 19. Fragment of a shell gorget, from Charleston, Missouri. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 171 their centers. These nodes are relieved by cutting away portions of the shell around them. In the center of the cross is another small node or ring similarly relieved. The lines are neat and deeply incised. The edge of the shell has been broken away nearly all around. The accompanying cut represents the ornament, natu- ral size. It was obtained from a mound on Fain's Island, Tenn. A large shell cross, the encircling rim of which has been broken away, is shown in Fig. 19. The perforations are still intact. The cross is quite plain. This specimen is very much decayed, and came to the National Museum inside of a skull obtained from a grave at Charleston, Mo. Beyond this there is no^ record of the specimen. Fig. 20. Cross cut in a plate of copper, Ohio. In Fig. 20 a large copper disk from an Ohio mound is presented. The specimen is eight inches in diameter, is very thin, and has suffered greatly from corrosion. A symmetrical cross, the arms of which are five inches in length, has been cut out of the center. Two concentric lines have been impressed in the plate-rone near the margin and the other touching the ends of the cross. It is now in the Natural History Museum at New York. Other examples of the cross obtained from the mounds could be added to this list — a few in shell and stone and many in copper. Examples of the Latin cross are rarely met with excepting in the 172 TEANSACTIONS OF THE latter material and in silver; this is a significant fact. The Christian cross in all its forms abounds in the post-Columbian art of the American tribes. DISCUSSION. Professor Thomas thought that a study of the Mexican hiero- glyphs would help to absolutely explain the symbol of the cross in Mexico. The dots associated with the cross have reference to the days of the week. The east was always at the top, not to the right or left. The rings or circles signify cycles, and time is counted from right to left. The colors referring to the cardinal points are not persistent, as mentioned by Dr. Brinton. An interesting discussion was continued by the various members present upon the forms of the cross as a symbol of Christianity, its origin, etc., after which Dr. Hagner read a paper on "Origin OF THE Sexes." The discussion which followed was of a professional character, and various remarks were made and instances presented supposed to illustrate and support what has been termed the Law of Compen- sation in Nature. The President then announced that this was the last meeting of the season prior to the summer vacation. He stated that the Society might look with gratification upon the past year's labors, and he took pleasure in announcing that the committee on publica- tion would be in session during the summer in order to prepare volume II of our Transactions. After which he declared the Society adjourned to meet on the first Tuesday in November. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. The following publications have been received since the meeting of May 15th and prior to the prhiting of this volume : From Prof. D. Anoutchine. — Exposition des Sciences Anthropolo- giques. Societe Imperiale des Amis des Sciences Naturelles, d' anthropologic et d' Ethnographic de Moscou. 1878. Pp. 24. Rules and regulations of above Society. 1881. From Prof. G. Capellini. — L'Eta della Pietra nella valle della Vibrata. Bologna. 1871. 4to. Armi e Utensili di Pietra del Bolognese. Bologna. 1870. 4to. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 173 From Prof. G. Capellini. — Grotta dei Colombi a I'ile Palmaria golfe de la Spezia. Station de cannibales a I'epoque de la Madeleine. Bologne. 1873. 8vo. Materiaux utilises par les Anciens Habitants de Felsina. Budapest, 1867. 8vo, Les Grottes de Molfetta. Bruxelles. 1873. ^^o. Les traces de L'homme Pliocene en Toscane. Budapest, 1877. 8vo. L'uomo pliocenico in Toscana. Bologna. 1875. Grotta deir osteriola. Bologna. 1871-72. Sur la decouverte de la cassiterite en Italie, n. d. Congresso Internazionale di Antropologia e di Archeologia Preistorica. VII Sessione a Stoccolma nel 1874. Bologna, 1874. Congresso Internazionale di Archeologia Preistorica. IV Sessione a Copenaghen nel 1869. Bologna. 1870. Congresso Internazionale di Antropologia e Archeologia Preistorica. Sesta Sessione a Bruxelles. 1872. Firenze. 1873- Congres Geologique International a Bologne. Guide a r exposition Geologique etPaleontologique' Bologne. 1881. Institut de Geologic et de Paleontologie a Bologne. Guide aux Collections. Bologne. 1881. Bibliographic Geologique et Paleontologique de 1' Italie, par les soins du comite d' organisation du 2me Congres Geo- logique International a Bologne 1881. Bologne. 1881. 8vo. Pp. 630. From Dr. H. Fischer. — Ueber Steinschneidekunst der Alten. [Ext. from " Correspondenz-Blatt der deutschen Gesellschaft fiir Anthrop. Eth. u. Urg. Menschen."J 1883. Archiv. fiir Anthropologic zu Braunschweig. Containing extended reviews of works by "Francisco Jimeno, Cuba, 1881," and "J. Barboza Rodrigues, Rio de Janeiro, 1875." Ueber Babylonische "Talesmane," (Cylinder und andere Formen,) aus dem historischen museum im steierisch-land- schaftlichen Joanneum zu Graz. Stuttgart. 1881. 4to. Uber Zinnerze, Aventuringlas und griinen Aventurinquarz aus Asien, sowie iiber Krokydolithquarz aus Griechenland. 1882. Mineralogisch-archaologische Studien. Wien. 1878. Notice sur la Distifibution Geographique des Haches et outres Objets Prehistoriques. [Ext. from Revue Archeologique.] Paris. 1878. Bericht iiber eine Anzahl Steinsculpturen aus Costarica. Bremen. 1881. Also a number of miscellaneous papers and pamphlets. 174 TKANSACTIONS OF THE From Count Giovanni Gozzadini. — Di Un'antica necropoli a Marzabotto nel Bolognese. Bologna. 1865. 4to. 20 plates. Di ulterior! scoperte nell'antica necropoli a Marzabotto nel Bolognese. Bologna. 1870. 4to. 17 plates. Congres d'Archeologie et d' Ethnographic Prehistoriques, Session de Bologne. Discours d'ouverture, par M. Ic Comte Gozzadini, President du Congres. Bologne. 1871. 8vo. Nella Solenne Inaugurazione del Museo civico di Bologna, fatta il 25 Settembre, 1881. Discorso del Direttore Generale Senatore Gozzadini. Bologna. 1881. 8vo. 2 plates. From Hon. J. Lewis Peyton. — History of Augusta county, Vir- ginia. 1882. 8vo. pp. 395. From the Author. — Les Temps Prehistoriques dans le sud-est de la France. L' Homme dans la vallee inferieure du Gardon, par P. Cazalis de Fondouce. Montpellier. 1872. 4to. 90 pp. 14 plates. Les Temps Prehistoriques dans le sud-est de la France. Alices couvertes de la Provence. Par P. Cazalis de Fon- douce. Montpellier. 1873. 4*^. 32 pp. 5 plates. Les Temps Prehistoriques dans le sud-est de la France. Alices couvertes de la Provence. Second Memoire. Par P. Cazalis de Fondouce. Montpellier. 1878. 4to. 64 pp. 7 plates. Produit des Fouilles poursuivies a Durfort (Gard). Par M. P. Cazalis de Fondouce. Paris. 1875. ^vo. Quelques Notes sur les questions relatives a I'Antiquite de I'homme. Par P. Cazalis de Fondouce. Montauban. 1875. 8vo. Ebauche d'une Carte Archeologique du Departement de L'Herault. Pat P. Cazalis de Fondouce. Montpellier. 1879. 8vo. Action erosive du Sable en Movement sur des cailloux de la vallee du Rhone. Par P. Cazalis du Fondouce. Mont- pellier. 1880.,, Sm. 4to. Emploi de la Callais dans 1' Europe occidentale pendant les temps prehistoriques. Par Cazalis de Fondouce. Toulouse, 1 88 1. 8vo. La Question de 1' Homme Tertiaire en Portugal. Par P. Cazalis de Fondouce. Montpellier, 8vo. Sur les D^fauts de Prononciation et leur Traitement ; par M. le docteur Chervin. From Bulletin Hebdomadaire de 1' Asso- ciation Scientifique de France. Paris. 1883. 16 pp. 8vo. Commission de Statistique Municipale. Rapport presente par M. le docteur Arthur Chervin. 1883. 8 pp. 4to. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 175 From the Author. — Sur un annuaire Demographique Interna- tional. Par M. le docteur Arthur Chervin. Extrait des Annales de Demographie International. Paris. 1882. 4 pp. 8vo. Etude des Resultats Generaux du Denombrement de la population de 1881. Par M. le docteur Arthur Chervin. Extrait des Ann. de Demog. Intern. Paris. 11 pp. Commission Consultative pour le Denombrement de la Popu- lation. Memoire presente par M. le docteur Arthur Cher- vin. Paris. 1880. 44 pp. 8vo. From the Society.- — List of Palaeozoic Fossil Insects of the United States and Canada. By R. D. Lacoe. Publication No. 5, of the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society. Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. 1883. 21 pp. 8vo. From the Author. — L'Amerique Prehistorique. fBy Marquis de Nadaillac. Paris. 1883. 558 pp., and 219 ill. in text. 8vo. Der Schadel Raphaels. By Dr. Hermann Schaaffhausen. Bonn. 1883. 4to. Der Kiefer aus der Schipka-Hohle. By the same. Bonn. 1883. 8vo. Die prahistorischen Kupfergerathe Nordamerikas. By Dr. Emil Schmidt. 3 plates. Essen, n. d. Kraniologische Untersuchungen. By the same. Essen, n. d. Ueber die Bestimmung der Schadelcapacitat. By the same. Essen, n. d. Mittheilungen aus der Anthropologischen Literatur Ameri- kas. 3 parts. By the same. Essen, n. d. Ueber mexicanische Steinfiguren. By Prof. Dr. H. Fischer. Ext. from Festschrift der 56 Versammlung Deutscher Natur- forscher u. Arzte, &c. Stuttgart. 1.883. This Society is recognized by the Treasury Department as entitled to import boo]cs for its collection free of duty. In order that the officers of the customs may have no embarrassment in forwarding at once books so intended, per- sons sending them from foreign countries by mail or otherwise are requested to address — The Anthropological Society of Washington, care of Col. F. A. Seely, Secretary to the Council, Washington, D. C, U. S. A. 176 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ANNUAL ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT, J. W. Powell, Delivered November 6, 1883. HUMAN EVOLUTION THE SOURCES OF HUMAN HISTORY. ,The story of human evolution is the essence of the history of mankind. Knowing what man is and does, the inquiry arises, How came he thus to be and so to do ? The reply is history, and its sources will be briefly characterized. I. — Geologic Records. From the science of geology we learn that strata of rocks are constantly forming. The rains wash down the hills and deposit a part of the materials in the valleys and carry another part into the lakes and seas. During this process the bones and shells of animals are buried ; and the bones of man and the implements of his art are buried with them. There have been tribes of men who, unable to construct habita- tions for themselves, sought shelter in caves, where they lived and died, generation following generation. In such caves they gathered their rude works of art, together with the bones of the animals that furnished them food. Thus it came that the osseous remains of men, together with the works of their hands and the bones of the animals sacrificed to their hunger, were buried in the natural accumulations of the caves, and now they may be exhumed as subjects of study. There have been tribes of men living on the banks of rivers or on the shores of the seas who brought to their rude habitations the denizens of the waters — the fish, the crustacean, and the mollusk. Within and without their dwellings bones and shells accumulated from year to year and from century to century. To such savage peoples this material was not offensive refuse, and so to them no ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 177 thought of removing it occurred. It therefore accumulated. As their simple dwellings were reconstructed from time to time, they still surmounted the accumulations gathered from the waters and the lands. By this process shell-mounds were raised, and in them were buried the bones of the land animals and of the birds of the air. Prom time to time the implements used by the people were lost and buried in the same refuse-matter; and sometimes these ancient peoples buried their dead beneath their houses. In such shell mounds, therefore, stores of. valuable historic materials can now be discovered. There have been tribes of men who buried their dead in the earth, and placed in the graves the possessions of the departed and many pious offerings, and sometimes erected huge mounds of earth thereon ; and now skeletons, possessions, and offerings are exhumed. There have been tribes of men who built their habitations over the waters of lakes, and these structures fell and were buried by lacustrine sediments; and now the ancient lake-dwellings can be studied. There have been tribes of men who erected habitations on the flanks of slumbering volcanoes. Mountains heed not the welfare of man, and when the volcanoes were aroused men and their homes were buried. Under such formations the remains of man and the works of his art are entombed. Tribes of men have made their homes under overhanging cliffs, using the natural caves of the rocks as part of their habitations, and constructing external walls of stone. Such cliff-dwellings have- finally fallen into ruins, and have been more or less buried by the disintegrating rocks falling from above. Other peoples have built towns and cities of stone or clay, and the winds have drifted the sands over their ruins. From such buried cities valuable historic materials are exhumed. II. — Designed History. Whenever man has acquired a written language, of pictographs, ideographs, syllabaries, or alphabets, he has made records for a variety of purposes. This designed history not composed solely of accounts of what the writers ther 'ves sa ^r whaf: they learned from contemporaries, but it also i es -hich 'Md been re- 12 178 TKANSACTIONS OF THE ceived by tradition. Anterior to the development of writing, man exercised his memory in the preservation of history to a greater extent than now, so that historic events were transmitted from gen- eration to generation by tradition with an accuracy of diction sur- prising to civilized man. This designed history is in many ways imperfect, being vitiated in part by ignorance and in part by design, as to a large extent the purpose of such history was laudation or the advocacy of measures. But, as much of history has been written by many persons, and the same events have thus been re- corded from diverse standpoints of opinion and interest, critical comparative study reveals much truth, III. — Undesigned History. Since the invention of writing, very much of history has been undesignedly recorded. Early records of this class are largely poetic. Many deeds designedly told have been rhetorically illus- trated by fragments of history — statements of facts in which the writer had no motive for misstatement but all motive for the ex- pression of the truth. Such history appears under a variety of forms — mythic accounts of creation, accounts of the ceremonial institutions of religions, and narratives of the adventures of heroes, into which are woven statement of the manufacture and use of weapons and other instruments. Accounts are given of the coun- cils of people, in which the statements made by persons taking part therein recount the doings of their ancestors ; and one of the earlier uses of writing was that of recording codes of laws by which societies were regulated. All of these records undesignedly writ- ten as history prove to be of the greatest value to the scientific historian of the present epoch. The records themselves are not vitiated. Their value depends on sound interpretation. IV. — Comparative Statics. The study of mankind as he is, without reference to what he has been, is sometimes called Social Statics. When we learn what man is and does, as he is represented among civilized, barbaric, and savage nations and tribes, and compare the statics of each society with every other, and arrange them in order from the lowest savage tribe to the highest civilized nation, it is discovered that a series of conditions appears, parallel to the series of conditions derived from ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 179 geologic records, designed history, and undesigned history ; so that the history of the progress of any people from savagery to civiliza- tion is found to a large extent similar to an account of existing peoples, beginning at the lowest and passing to the highest. When the scientific historian is in doubt about the course of events among the people whom he is investigating, he turns to comparative statics to discover what it teaches as a guide to his researches. In like manner the student of comparative statics finds corroborative evi- dence cf his truthful conclusions in the writings of the scientific historian. Such, in brief outline, are the sources of history. From them an intelligent account of the progress of man, from an early period of his existence upon the earth until the present time, has already been derived. True, all is not known. The future scholar will discover that what is now written is imperfect ; but that which is known is of profound interest, and contains lessons for human welfare that mankind cannot ignore. THE EARLY CONDITION OF MAN. From the geologic record it is ascertained that man lived in late Tertiary times. In early Quaternary time he is found widely scat- tered throughout the earth, for his bones are discovered in the Ter- tiary or Quaternary rocks of every continent. By the laws of evolu- tion, now postulated in all sound scientific research, it is inferred that he existed as a highly differentiated animal long anterior to that time, and it is confidently believed by anthropologists that geologic research will eventually demonstrate this inference. Be that as it may, man was widely distributed in the first part of Qua- ternary time. Now, science has not yet established a method for measuring geologic time in the units of recorded history — in years, though some attempts of this character have been made, and im- portant conclusions have resulted therefrom. It is sufficient here to say that Quaternary time must be measured by scores, or hun- dreds, of thousands of years. The remains found exhibit the fact that at such time as they were deposited the human beings to which they belonged were highly developed as compared with the most advanced of the lower animals existing at the present day, and yet that they were less advanced than the lowest of men existing now, 180 TRANSACTIONS OF THE and much lower than man in his highest estate. All this comes from the geologic record. In the same manner the comparative anatomy of the peoples of tribes and nations still existing exhibits the fact that savages are physically much more like the lower animals than are civilized men. In geologic formations of the same age as those in which the first human remains are found, many implements are discovered, fashioned by man and used by him for a variety of purposes. These tools, in the materials of which they are made, in their fash- ioning, and in their uses, exhibit a very low state of culture, for we here discover the very beginning of the arts in the use of rudely shaped stones, fragments of bones, and shells. Now these rude works of art — stone hammers, stone celts, shells and fragments of shells, bones and fragments of bones — are scattered everywhere throughout the habitable earth, and therefore it is certain that when man began the invention of arts he had occupied the whole earth. In the study o"f the institutions of mankind, it is discovered'that as we go backward in the recorded history of the civilized races, or go downward in the scale of peoples from civilization to savagery as these peoples exist as tribes and nations upon the earth, such institutions, through which society is organized and regulated, have passed through a series of stages, such stages becoming more and more simple as we go backward and downward. First it is noticed that the structure of bodies politic, /. e., the plan of organiza- tion, changes by becoming more simple and by presenting charac- teristics which manifestly include less and less numbers in each corporate body or state, be it national or tribal ; so that the earliest forms of states, from the very nature of their structure, could not include large bodies of people. As we pass back in civilization the smaller becomes the nation. As we still pursue our investigation through barbarism into the lowest savagery, the smaller becomes the tribe. This leads to the conclusion that in the early history of mankind there was a vast multiplicity of tribal states. The condition of primitive man is also discovered in the study of languages. In the early history of philologic research it was assumed that the thorough study of languages would result in tracing them to a common stock. For a time, as the languages of the more civilized peoples were studied, this earliest hypothesis rapidly gained credence, from the fact that the languages of the more ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 181 civilized peoples were thus traced to a common stock — the Aryan. But, as research was widened, and the languages of more diverse peoples were studied, new groups were established on as firm a basis as that upon which the Aryan rests. As investigation progressed from decade to decade, these stocks of languages rapidly multiplied, so that a very great diversity of original stocks or families of lan- guages is now recognized. But there is yet a further stage in this line of research. It is shown that every such grpup of languages in the course of its history borrows to a greater or less extent from others. Sometimes this borrowed material can be traced to other stocks known to exist. Much of it cannot be thus traced, and it becomes highly probable that many linguistic stocks have been so far lost that only these fragments, these waifs of language, remain to give hints of their existence. It is thus shown that languages have had a multiplicity of origins ; and it is further shown that languages, in the earliest stages of which we have knowledge, were very imperfectly organized — that is, they were very crude tools for the communication of thought. A philosophy is a system of opinions concerning the phenomena of the universe which the people entertaining such opinions have observed. If we take the history of any civilized people from the earliest record to the present time, it will be observed that the philosophy of such a people has changed in every stage of pro- gress. If, on the other hand, the philosophies of different peoples, civilized, barbaric, and savage, are studied, it is discovered that the course of evolution observed is parallel with the series of phi- losophies obtaining among existing peoples. Certain important characteristics are observed in these philosophies ; namely, that the philosophies of civilized peoples are highly unified ; that as we go backward in their history they become more diverse ; and finally, when we study the earliest philosophies, together with the philoso- phies of the lowest tribes of mankind, we discover that there is a vast multiplicity of systems of opinions ; that each such system of philosophy becomes the supposed explanation of the phenomena of a small district of country which was to some little tribe the whole extent of its universe. In this manner it is discovered that in the earliest stage of opinions there was a vast multiplicity ot philosophies. It will thus be seen that from five great co-ordinate departments of anthropology, /. (?., from somatology, or the biology of man; 182 TRANSACTIONS OF THE from technology, or the science of the arts ; from sociology, the science of institutions ; from philology, the science of languages ; and from philosophy, the science of opinions, we arrive at the common conclusion that man was widely scattered throughout the earth at some early period in his history in a very low state of culture j that in such state he utilized the materials at hind — the loose stones of the earth, the bones scattered about, the shells stranded on the shores, the brokeii trunks and branches of trees, and whatever would most immediately come to hand without ingenuity and without toil. And we further discover that he was organized into small tribes, doubtless scattered by every bay and inlet of the seas, along the shores of all the inland lakes, on every bend of the great rivers, and on every creek of the habitable earth. Man thus scattered had not yet acquired organized speech. Doubt- less he had rude language, or he could not thus have spread through the earth, the lord of the fowl and the brute ; but organized oral speech began at a multiplicity of centers, with each little tribe of the earth. With speech, into which opinions could be molded, began the growth of philosophies. Arts, institutions, languages, and philosophies have therefore a vast multiplicity of origins, and in tracing the outlines of their history we trace the change from multiplicity toward unity. Before proceeding to describe the nature of this change it will be well to take a general glance at man as an animal. It appears that at this early time, as man was spreading from some center through- out the earth, the laws of biotic evolution were in force, and there had resulted therefrom much biotic specialization, for man was yet but the highest of animals. This specialization had resulted in the establishment of varieties, exhibited in the color of the skin, the structure of the hair, the position of the eyes, the conformation of the cranium, and other biotic peculiarities. Had the laws of biotic evolution continued paramount, it cannot be doubted that these varieties would steadily have become more and more pronounced, and the genus homo would ere this have included many species. But through the evolution of arts, institutions, languages, and opinions, the laws of biotic evolution, though perhaps not absolutely re- pealed, were superseded by other methods and laws which changed the course of man's progress. By the spreading and admixture of activities, and by the concomitant admixture of streams of blood varieties were prevented from becoming species. The tendency ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 183 to heterogeneity of species was checked, and a tendency to homo- geneity was estabUshed. Having thus briefly set forth the early condition of man, it is proposed to describe the course and method of human evolution thenceforth. Up to the time which we are now considering, man's history was the history of the animal man, but when man became superior to the lower animals his course of progress depended no longer on the laws of biotic evolution, namely, the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence, through the fact that by reason of his superiority he no longer came in competition with the lower animals ; he then used animals and plants alike for his own pur- poses. A new method of evolution arose. Animals under the laws of biotic evolution were adapted to the environment ; man, through his activities, adapted the environment to himself; and through these activities men became organized ; and thus there is a third kingdom of matter, of which the science of anthropology treats. The origin and nature of these activities will now be set forth. THE GENESIS OF ACTIVITIES. The Mind. In biotic evolution a special organ is developed to regulate the interdependence of the other organs as they perform their functions for a common purpose — the welfare of all. This organ, itself a complexity of organs with differentiated functions, becomes also the organ of communication between the individual and his environ- ment. At first the means of communication are tactual. Out of the general tactual sense the more specialized sense of taste is dif- ferentiated, having a limited set of nerves for its organs. Another differentiation of touch is the sense of smell, by which certain properties of exceedingly minute bodies, emanating from larger, are perceived. Then comes another differentiation of tactual per- ception, in the evolution of an organ so delicately constituted as to detect minute vibrations of the air — the sense of hearing. And finally an organ of tactual sense is developed, so exceedingly deli- cate as to perceive those vibrations of the ether called light. Thus the five senses are differentiated out of the general tactual sense, each having more highly specialized organs in the order in which they have been named. 184 TRANSACTIONS OP THE As the functions of biotic organization are performed through the transmutations of matter and motion and the passing on of the constituent matter from one stage to another until it entirely passes from the living body, having been replaced from stage to stage by new constituent matter, the impressions which the senses receive from the exterior are imposed upon the structure, as the old leaves and the new takes it places. In this manner each minute structure within the body is in part the same as the antecedent structure and in part changed therefrom by the force of impressions from without. It is in this manner that impressions are recorded, so that the struc- ture itself is a product of all co-existent and antecedent agencies. Out of this arises Memory. First, then, an organ is developed for receiving impressions from without, to be used in regulating the functions within ; and this becomes highly specialized, so as to receive a vast multiplicity of impressions. Then, by reason of the nature of vital functions, a record of such impressions is preserved, and mind results therefrom. Objective impressions are transmuted into subjective sensations and perceptions. ISIind weaves them into emotions and thoughts, and men are thereby propelled into other activities. An organ or system of organs for the mind is discovered, more or less highly developed, in the lower animals, but its great development is found in man. The science of the mind is Psychology. The Arts. In the biotic kingdom activity first appears among plants, and its inception has been denominated Circumnutation by Darwin, the greatest of biologists. Then follow various movements, all of which are usually included under the general term Sensitiveness, exhibited in a great variety of ways among plants. This effort of the plant, under varying conditions of environment, to gain the advantages of the more favorable, results in movements that are here called Activities. It is thus that plants become actors. Activities of a higher order appear among animals. Such as are fixed reach out their tentacles for food ; such as are free have loco- motion, and they seize their food as do fixed animals. In this manner animals become subjects, or actors, doing that which they will or design. They seek shelter from the storm, or purposely bask in the sunshine. Then they prepare shelters for themselves. ANTHROLOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 185 provide ways or devices for procuring food and for escaping dangers, and in a great variety of ways perform acts. In doing such acts animals are said to woi-k — they perform oper- ations. But in passing from the lower animals to mankind we find that these operations are greatly multiplied and diversified. This arises primarily from a higher differentiation of the human organ- isms. Through arboreal life and the activities concomitant there- with, under the well-known laws of specialized development, hands were evolved — special organs for operative functions. Thus, out of biotic function were evolved those activities which will here be denominated Operations ; and the evolution of operations is the evolution of art. The science of the arts is Technology. Institutions. Low in the scale of animal life bilateral symmetry appears. The lower animals are characterized by a multiplicity of like organs for the performance of the same functions. In the loss of this multi- plicity and the development of special organs for special functions, there were gradually evolved duplicate sets of organs performing like functions. These duplicate organs are so adjusted as to render each other important assistance. Not all the organs are thus dupli- cated. In general it may be said that those specially engaged in alimentation are single. Those whose functions mainly relate to activities in the external world are double and co-operative. Vision is greatly facilitated by duplicate eyes, hearing by duplicate ears, manual operations by duplicate hands, and locomotion by duplicate feet. To an important extent, therefore, the animal organism is an association of two sets of like parts, co-operating for common purposes. The next step in the higher organization of animals is also biotic. This consists in the differentiation of the individuals of the species into male and female for bi-sexual reproduction. With- out this peculiar biotic differentiation the individuals of the species would have been discrete. Each individual would have been the competitor of every other, and there would have been no genesis of co-operative association ; but bi-sexual differentiation became the basis of co-operation at the foundation of life. Having thus become associated into more or less coherent groups, there were gradually developed therefrom co-operative activities in many ways. There was co-operation in obtaining food, in securing shelter, in 186 TRANSACTIONS OF THE warning from danger, in destroying enemies ; and this process in the evolution of association has continued until many, perhaps all, of the more highly organized animals have acquired social institutions more or less crude. Among some of the lower animals a further biotic differentiation progressed pari passu with a further specialization of activities. This is seen curiously exhibited among bees and other species of the articulates; so that their higher social organization is a con- comitant of biotic differentiation. But among the vertebrates biotic differentiation did not proceed further in conjunction with operative differentiation. Along with the differentiation of opera- tions a special class of employments sprang up, having as their function the regulation of the conduct of the individuals associated. This was the inception of government. Government, then, is the specialized activity of regulation. In a crude manner, and to a limited extent, many of the species of the lower animals have de- veloped this specialization of operations, and have further devel- oped the rudiments of that special activity here known as Govern- ment. But the operative activities have their highest development among mankind. Through them society is organized by the dif- ferentiation of many arts and the establishment of interdependence therein, and especially by the growth of the operative activity known as Government, by which all other operative activities are regulated. This gives the science of Sociology. Language. In the biotic process of evolution the senses were developed, and by them more delicate communication between the subject and the environment was established. In the association of individuals which arose from sexualism this delicate communication between the individual and the environment was further developed into communication between individuals. The biotic organism, through its most highly developed organic part — the nervous system — having become able to perceive the characteristics of the natural environ- ment which immediately affected its own existence and welfare, be- came competent also to interpret certain of the characteristics or attitudes of the individuals of the environment with whom there was constant association ; and individuals perceived that their own attitudes were thus discovered by changes effected thereby in the ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 187 attitudes of others. In this manner, by minute increments of knowledge, each learned something of the other with whom he was associated, and each learned to communicate with the other, /. e., to assume attitudes designed to influence the other. Through this intercommunication language was developed. The senses became the passive organs of language. Attitudes of the body developed into gestures, and soimd-making into oral speech, and the active •organs of language were specialized ; and finally, oral speech to a large extent superseded gesture speech. Languages are developed .among the lower animals, but their chief development appears among mankind, and by it men became associated in thought. The consideration of these linguistic activities belongs to the science -ol Philology. Opinions. Combined and compounded thoughts produce opinions. Through the evolution of language, opinions are transmitted from individual to individual, so that the perceptive experiences of one come to be the common property of many. Through the law of heredity, opinions, or the elements of which they are composed, are trans- mitted. Opinions, therefore, are derived from ancestors, from personal experience, and from the experiences of others communi- cated by language. Through all of these processes opinions rapidly ■multiply, and by their interaction they are changed in quality. Organized opinions are philosophies. A few crude opinions are held by the lower animals. They come to believe that certain things will do them harm, others good ; that certain attitudes of living Ijeings are indices to their intentions. But a much higher develop- ment of opinion is discovered among mankind. The science of opinions is called Philosophy. It will thus be seen that five great classes of activities are recog- nized, under which all human actions may be grouped. In the first are embraced the activities of the Mind in transmuting objective impressions into subjective sensations and perceptions, and the ■compounding of the elements of thought into the formation of opinions. In the second are embraced the operations of mankind in supplying his wants. These are the Arts. Third, the activities of mankind that lead to the organization of societies. These are the Institutions. Fourth, the activities of intercommunication be- 188 TRANSACTIONS OF THE tween mind and mind, embraced under the general term Language. Fifth, the activities of the mind in combining the more simple opinions into the more compound, producing Philosophies. Thought has necessarily been used as the name for units of dif- ferent orders. The term opinion has been used in a like manner. The ultimate product of thought is opinion ; the ultimate product of opinion is philosophy. In the same manner institutions and. arts are each used to designate units of different orders. Psychic activities are subjective, being states of the mind ; objective activi- ties produce arts, institutions, languages, and opinions. All have their genesis in biotic functions. All are observed among the lower animals. All receive their highest development in man. In their evolution they act and re-act upon each other, so that in their pro- gress there is an ever-increasing interdependence. Through their evolution the biotic organs on which they are dependent are devel- oped, or specialized, by exercise. The evolution of mind, therefore, is dependent upon and proceeds with the evolution of arts, insti- tutions, languages, and opinions, and its history is their history. The course and methods of anthropic evolution must be ultimately sought in the history of activities. The doctrines of biotic evolution are now woven into the speech of common life. They need not here be recapitulated. The evo- lution of man up to the time of his acquisition of organized activi- ties is fully set forth in those doctrines. Since that time the course and method of his evolution have been radically changed. EVOLUTION OF ARTS. The arts of mankind begin with the utilization of the most ac- cessible materials in the natural environment. Clubs are made of wood, various instruments of percussion of stone; shells are used as domestic utensils, and the skins of animals as clothing. Then man learns to fashion his clubs, to fashion implements of stone,, bone, and horn, and to add to his utensils of shells plaited woodwork, as trays and baskets. Then he learns to fashion and bake clay for domestic utensils. Such rude arts began at innumerable centers,, at every home of a primordial tribe ; and the arts at first, arising from utilization of the materials immediately at hand, were con- trolled by the immediate environment. Tribes living in forests made shelters of wood, and improved them from time to time. ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 189 Tribes living in more arid regions, where wood was scarce and rocks were scattered upon the surface of the earth ready to hand, made their first shelters, and subsequently their more highly de- veloped habitations, of stone. Tribes that lived on the fens of rivers and the low shores of lakes utilized reeds as the materials for their shelters and habitations. In a multitude of ways this fact could be illustrated, that the most accessible materials in each center of the development of arts controlled at first the nature of the arts themselves. From this condition progress was steadily made, in using first the materials and secondly the powers of nature, until multitudes of arts sprang up. In the arts of sustentation, from hunting, fishing, root-digging, and the gathering of fruits and seeds came agriculture. Then followed the domestication of ani- mals, and finally man employed beasts of burden. In the arts of transportation by water, first logs and rafts of logs and rafts of reeds were used. Then logs were hollowed for boats, and reeds were constructed into similar craft, and boats were made of bark. At first boats were propelled by paddles, then by oars, and then by sails. And finally beasts of burden came to be extensive agen- cies for transportation. Then trails became highways, and then first some tribes became nomads. The story would indeed be long were it all told ; only the briefest illustrations are necessary. In the early history of the arts tools were used, and tools developed into machines as device was combined with device. Tools and machines are used in art operations, such as agricul- ture, house-building, cloth-making. Each operation or distinct art is composed of processes, and each process has its corre- sponding tool or machine. With the evolution of implements, composed of tools and machinery, there is an evolution of pro- cesses— the functions of machines; and through the evolution of processes and implements the arts themselves are evolved. As processes and machines have gradually become interdependent in each art, in like manner interdependence has been established among all the arts. Agriculture has become dependent upon manu- factures for agricultural implements ; manufactures have become de- pendent upon mines for the materials used therein ; agricultural arts, manufacturing acts, and mining arts have become dependent upon the arts of transportation to bring the materials together and scat- ter the products to the places where they are to be used. There is thus established among all arts throughout the civilized world a 190 TRANSACTIONS OF THE vast plexus of dependencies, so that the operations of each art are dependent upon the operations of other arts ; and with every differentiation of a new art the interdependence increases. Thus it is seen that man in his invention has developed the arts. In the course of invention each artifice has been the pre- lude to some other artifice, each process to some new process- Each device with its process is a step in an ascending series. As better processes and implements are invented, old processes and implements are discarded. The good is constantly being replaced by the better, and the better by the best. The better is- chosen, the worse rejected. A pyschic activity of choice inter- venes, and the method of progress by human selection is estab- lished as distinguished from natural selection. Thus again we have a survival of the fittest; and it should be noticed that it is a sur- vival of the objective art, not of the subjective artist. Progress in the arts, therefore, is made by human invention and selection, and the invention and selection alike are the work of — not one man,, but all men. Man in his highest estate in modern civilization has developed a vast multitude of arts, and through them he controls the natural environment in such a manner that no longer is he beaten by the winds and driven by the storms and starved by the deserts; no longer is he the abject creature of physical changes — the environ- ment is now controlled by himself. Being an actor, he deter- mines his own progress and is master of his own destiny. All the arts are man's inventions — not of any one man, nor of a few inventors appearing at long intervals from time to- time as great benefactors, but all mankind have been inventors. The body of arts to-day existing in civilized society has grown up by minute increments, from the days of the club and the shell to the days of the engine and the loom. As the arts are expressed in material nature they can be easily imitated and learned. From their very nature they readily spread from man to man, from tribe to tribe, and from nation to nation. Again, as arts are developed for the purpose of supplying the wants of man, the impulse to imitate and borrow is the most pressing. Whenever arts have been developed they have rapidly spread, so that that which one man has done has been a boon to many, and what each man has done has been a boon to all. It is thus that the whole world is engaged in the invention and spread of ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 191 the arts; and when we contemplate their vast development, the extent to which man has gained control over the materials and powers of nature, the magnitude of the result is equaled only by the magnitude of the agencies that work therein. The arts are the inventions of all mankind, from the days in which man lived in equality with strange beasts that have perished until the present when the earth is embellished by his hand. Art is the product of all labor through all human time. EVOLUTION OF INSTITUTIONS. As the simple arts with tools and processes developed into the complex and compound arts with machines and operations, men engaged in these labors were thereby made interdependent. Each one became dependent upon many others for the successful prose- cution of his own calling. Farmers became dependent upon man- ufacturers for machines, manufacturers upon miners for materials, miners upon farmers for food. In every stage of the progress of art, man becomes more dependent upon his fellow-man. The shoemaker can use shoes directly to supply only a single want, but, in the complex conditions of life which have been evolved, he has a multitude of wants, which press upon him at every hour of the day, and for the supply of each one he is dependent upon a multi- plicity of other men, who are dependent upon him through the want for shoes. And so all civilized men are bound together by a plexus of cords, each one a want, and every man's happiness is dependent upon the happiness of others. But while the dependence of man has been steadily increasing from early savagery to high civilization, his authority over other men has in like manner been increasing. While he is subject to other men by reason of his wants, other men are in like manner subject to him by reason of their wants. Man is therefore steadily becoming more and more a master and more and more a servant. With every stage in the progress of art, interdependence is in- creased. Thus men have become organized as arts have become organized. With all this indirect organization arising through the arts, there is a direct organizatioai arising through institutions. In the process of this evolution mankind has become associated into groups on various plans. The association of a group of individuals for any purpose whatever gives rise to an institution. 192 TRANSACTIONS OF THE The primary grouping of mankind has its foundation in the biotic differentiation of the sexes, giving rise to the institution of mar- riage, or co-operation for reproduction. This first group is com- posed of husband and wife, parents and children. Added to the biotic differentiation of functions is the anthropic differentiation of activities. Here is discovered the first division of labor ; for while by necessity the wife and mother has the immediate charge of the offspring, the husband and father has the indirect care of mother and children in providing food and shelter therefor. It is only by a vague inference that the characteristics of this institution in its earliest form are known ; but it seems probable that the association of individuals in marriage was more or less ephemeral, continuing for longer or shorter periods entirely at the will of the individuals immediately concerned. Be the beginning what it may, the later history of the institution is well known, and some of the important facts relating thereto will hereafter be set forth. When a group of individuals engage in dancing, their actions are correlated, and an organized dance — for example, a cotillion — is an early form of institution. Such an institution is exceedingly ephemeral, as it lasts only while the activity is in progress; but it becomes more permanent in very early societies, as dancing associ- ations are formed. Such associations are composed of members who cultivate a particular dance, and who meet from time to time for the prosecution of the activity from which they derive a pleasure, and which to them has a mythic significance. These institutions are very common among the lower tribes of mankind, and consti- tute an important element in the structure of the tribal state. In early society it is discovered that associations are formed for hunting. Groups of men engage in this activity by enclosing game and driving it to a central position as the members of the group themselves converge. Among many tribes pitfalls are con- structed and winged barriers of logs, brush, or rocks adjusted thereto, to aid in guiding the driven game. For smaller animals nets are constructed, as snares into which they are driven. Such an association is an institution in its most primitive form and may be quite ephemeral, lasting only for a single hunt. But pitfalls, barriers, and nets may be used again on the same field, as from time to time during the season, and from year to year, the institution is revived. Then the individuals who take part therein often become more permanently organized into societies, ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 193 SO that there will be a society for the hunting of the buffalo, another for the hunting of the deer, another for the hunting of the rabbit. In like manner institutions for the practice of occult medicine arise. Medicines or charms are prepared with elaborate ceremonies, and virtues are implanted therein through the use of mysterious words accompanied by dancing, singing, and the performance of strange rites. Sometimes the association for this purpose is ephem- eral, but usually it is found that permanent societies are organized, each having the care of the systematized rite and the custody of the medicine. So institutions for the practice of religious rites and the perfor- mance of religious duties arise in early society, and continue on in various forms through civilization. Institutions for the prosecution of war are also organized. In early history war parties are socie- ties. By their further development armies are organized. As man progresses, institutions multiply. In a variety of ways men are organized into groups, or bodies politic, in each case for some specific purpose. Farmers organize agricultural societies, mechanics organize trades-unions, manufacturers organize their as- sociations. Then those bodies usually denominated corporations spring up, and groups of rnen are organized to prosecute a specific industry, as a gas company, composed of stockholders, officers, superintendents of various grades, and employes. Schools are organized, composed of principals, teachers, and pupils. Churches are organized with a hierarchy of officers and laymen. In a vast multiplicity of ways these institutions spring up, and the same in- dividual may become a component unit in many institutions. For convenience, all such institutions as have been here described, and which are designed to promote the prosecution of some enter- prise, will be called Operative Institutions, to distinguish them from the class next to be described. There is a special class of institutions that arise among men, de- signed for the regulation of conduct. The institution of marriage gives rise to the institution of the family. The necessary elements, parents and children, constitute a group of persons, and for their association authority and subordination are established. In the early history of society such groups coalesce into larger groups. Thus a group of brothers marry a group of sisters. The men are common husbands to the women, who are wives in common. Their '3 194 TRANSACTIONS OF THE children call one another brother and sister, though they may be but half brothers and half sisters or cousins. In order that men may live together in such a body politic there must be some method for the regulation of conduct, and this regulation is accomplished by the establishment of authority and subordination, upon the basis of relative age ; and in early languages a peculiar linguistic device springs up by which relative age is expressed in the terms of kin- ship by which the individuals of the body politic address one another. In these larger bodies regulation applies only to those particulars that lead to disagreement. It appears that the first sources of disagreement arise from the marriage relation. Men desire more or other wives, women more or other husbands. Dis- covering that the conflicts arising therefrom lead to the destruction of happiness, plans are made by which such disagreements may be obviated. A body of people geographically contiguous, and united, by a common but crude language and by common but crude opera- tive institutions, segregate into groups. The men who hold their wives in common and the wives who hold their husbands in com- mon establish an institution by which their children may more effectually avoid conflict and . be -more thoroughly organized for mutual assistance. This is done by segregating the children into groups — two or more groups of young men and two or more of young women. Then these groups are related to each other by rules or laws established by the elders, to the effect that one group of young men shall call one another brothers, and shall have a group of the young women as their wives in common. The sisters of the young men shall be the wives of another group, that second group being the brothers of the wives of the first. Thus the little tribal state is bound together by ties of affinity and consanguinity. Now this plan of structure of the early tribal state develops in many ways, through many curious institutions of marriage and of the family; but always in the early history of mankind the body politic is based upon kinship. The later forms of this political structure appear in the clan or gentile organization exhibited among the Indians of North America and many savage and barbaric peoples elsewhere throughout the globe; and it appears among our own Teutonic forefathers. Per- haps the gentile organization had its highest development among the Greeks and Romans. This kinship structure of society was well adapted to peoples scattered widely throughout the earth, each ANTHEOPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 195 having its own language, and to a greater or less extent its own system of arts and operative institutions. An important character- istic here to be noted is that it is adapted only to small bodies of men, who are able to keep in memory and recognize all the individuals belonging to the state, and to address them by their proper terms of kinship. The highest form of this society in its simplicity is the patriarchy, and through it ancestral worship is established. In all the history of kinship society the course of progress is such that classes, clans,, gentes, and higher groups of these are differentiated and integrated always to one end, namely, that a larger body of people may be brought into one regulative institution or state. At last kinship society broke down; it no longer served the wants of the people as a method of organization ; and slowly with its collapse a new system of organization was developed — that based upon property; and as land was the most important property, states came to have a territorial organization. So tribe coalesced with tribe, and nations were organized ; and through barbarism, which is the transition state, savagery developed into civilization, tribes into constitutional nations. The evolution of "Operative Institutions," as they have been denominated, will here be neglected, and attention will be called exclusively to the course and method of evolution of Regulative Institutions. Under these institutions we haye to consider : the structure of the state, the constitution of the government, and the principles of the law. The progress of evolution in the state is marked by a steady dif- ferentiation in the divisions thereof, and a relegation to each of some distinct function of government. On the other hand, the evolution is characterized by progressive coalescing of tribes into larger tribes and into nations, and of nations into larger nations. In the evolution of government there is to be observed a pro- gressive differentiation of function, as legislative, executive, and judicial; and in each of these great departments of government secondary and tertiary differentiations occur, while the whole sys- tem of government progressing from low tribes to highly civilized nations is marked by progressive intejgration in the establishment of relations of interdependence. In like manner the law, composed of the rules of conduct which organized society endeavors to enforce, is evolved. 196 TRANSACTIONS OF THE The course of the evolution of the state, the government, and the law was set forth much more fully in my last address to this society, and for that reason the subject will be neglected here ; but the essential point to which all this explanation is directed is this : regulative institutions have been developed by mankind in the struggle to secure peace. In order that men may live together in peace and render one another mutual assistance, institutions are invented. This is their purpose. The endeavor to secure peace has been by two parallel methods. The first is by the invention of institutions to terminate controversy, the second by institutions to prevent controversy ; and while the two systems are never fully differentiated, the two ideas may always be discovered in the regulative institutions of a people. In primitive society the institutions designed to terminate con- troversy are exceedingly crude, as a few illustrations will exem- plify. Among many tribes controversy must end at the Day of Jubilee. Again, if parties have resorted to personal conflict, controversy must end therewith. Thus results trial by duel. Trial by ordeal has a similar origin. It is simply, in its most primitive form, trial by lot, around which in time gather many ceremonies and religious sanctions. Among the Muskokis, if a member is guilty of certain breaches of good conduct, complaint is made to the patriarch of the gens, who considers the case. By a curious legal fiction crime in these cases consists in conduct which transgresses the teachings of the patriarch. Therefore, when he considers the case he renders his decision by simply stating that he has or has not previously in- structed the accused person not to do the things of which he is accused, and punishment is given or withheld accordingly, and con- troversy must end therewith. The law in such matters is manifestly composed of the teachings of the patriarch. The endeavor to secure peace leads, through the centuries of history, to the recognition of the more delicate phases of justice, and especially to the methods of obtaining and weighing evidence, that the facts in controversy may be clearly understood and the decisions be based upon facts, and justice rendered thereby. So it has been in all the multitudes of tribes that have inhabited the earth. Every event in the history of a tribe which has caused serious disagreement or a breach of the peace, has been the subject- ANTHKOPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 197 matter of controversy by such a people. Around their camp-fires, in their council-lodges, in rude underground chambers where jus- tice is administered, as well as in temples of justice where august courts deliberate — everywhere, human conduct has been the subject of discussion and deliberation. As the last product of all this en- deavor there have been evolved codes of law and systems of juris- prudence. When we contemplate the struggle between passion and passion, between man and man, and the deliberation of the wisest and best of mankind among all peoples through all the period of the existence of society, we are filled with astonishment at the magnitude of the endeavor to establish justice. The vast systems of jurisprudence in the civilized world result from this endeavor. But man has ever attempted to secure peace by preventing con- troversy. From time to time, as he has passed through the various stages of social progress, the immediate questions about which con- troversy has arisen have been the subjects of contemplation, and men have devised and counseled with one another in rudely or highly organized deliberative bodies for the purpose of formulating rules of conduct to secure peace, and this invariably ends in the consideration of the justice of rules of conduct. In the earliest forms of society the vigorous and able-bodied men, and sometimes women, meet from day to day or from time to time in council for the purpose of discussing conduct and establishing rules therefor. All along the course of the history of man we find that he has been thinking upon the characteristics of conduct that would secure jus- tice, so that justice has been the subject of his thought everywhere and at all times. The forests of the world have echoed the elo- quence of savage and barbaric orators as they have pleaded for jus- tice. It is indeed impossible for the human mind adequately to comprehend the amount of thought and endeavor which has been put forth for the development of the modern structure of the state, the modern constitution of the government, and the modern system of jurisprudence; and it has all been the work of man — not of one man, but of all men. THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. Language is the agency by which men have been interrelated through the communication of thought. In the course of its evo- lution gesture-speech has gradually been replaced by the more highly organized oral speech ; and finally written language has been based 198 TRANSACTIONS OP THE thereon by representing to the eye symbols of that which is spoken to the ear. To a very large extent, in its earliest history, language was addressed to the eye. It then became chiefly addressed to the ear; and at last the eye and ear alike become the passive organs of speech. For the present purpose, only oral language will be considered. It may be represented as composed of distinct sounds, each a syl- labic emission. They are themselves complex, but they may be considered as the units of which speech is compounded. A few simple devices appear in the use of these syllabic sounds to express thought. First, syllables may be combined — two or more put to- gether so that they coalesce in one word, or two or more words may be united to form one. This is the device of Combination. Second, the same particular syllable or word may be used in com- bination with many other words, in each case for the same or nearly the same purpose. Thus a particular syllable denoting time may be used with many words denoting action to give a time or tense qualification thereto. Often these added words or syllables become greatly worn, so that the orignal form is obscured or lost. There is a tendency to use such particular words in their original form, and more especially in their worn form, to a greater and greater extent as time progresses — that is, words in which they were not originally used come to have them attached by assimilation. For example, the past tense of love is loved, and it may be often noticed that children will use this same past tense with go, forming it as goed instead of gone. Thus, by wearing down of originally combined syllables and words, and by assimilation, systematic in- flections are produced, and this device is called Inflection. Third, the syllabic units of language, as they have been described above, are composed of vocalic and consonantal elements. In some lan- guages a mutation of the vocalic elements takes place. Thus in English, man in the singular is changed to men to express the plural; run is changed to ran, and lead to led for tense. This method, used to a very limited extent in English, becomes an im- portant element in the structure of some- languages, as the He- brew. Sometimes, like inflection, it is but a modified form of combination; perhaps it is always so. Be its origin what it may, in some languages it comes to be a clearly differentiated device. It is called Vocalic Mutation. Fourth, the words thus constituted may be arranged in some order, so that such order ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 199 itself shall be expressive. This is beautifully illustrated in the case of the use of the figures of the Arabic notation, where the place of the figure is significant. This is the device of Arrange- ment, which I have elsewhere called Flaceme?it. Fifth, syllables and words may be expressed with peculiar intonations, such for exam- ple, as rising and falling inflections. In the English language in- tonation is chiefly used for rhetorical purposes; in some other languages, especially the Chinese, it is used to a much greater de- gree, and for other purposes. This is the device of Intonation. Sixth, particular words may be uttered with greater force than •others for the purpose of calling attention to important ideas. This is the device of Etnphasis. Seventh, stress may be laid upon particular syllables in words, and thus particular meanings may be ^iven thereto. In English this is often done to differentiate parts of speech, as in rebel, the noun, and rebel, the verb. This is the device of Accent. In most languages combination and arrangement are the chiet devices. In the lower languages combination is chiefly used, and for a variety of purposes. Usually each syllable conveys a distinct idea, and by combining several syllables many ideas are expressed in one word. Such words, therefore, are not distinct parts of speech, but ■combinations of one or more. For example, in many languages there is no distinct word iox father, but a word signifying my father, 3J\ot}\ex your father, etc. ; that is, a noun and an adjective pronoun are combined in one word. Again, there is no distinct word for brother, but a word for my elder brother, another for my younger irother, &c. Thus three distinct elements are found in one word. In this manner nouns, adjectives, and pronouns are undifferentiated. But it is the verb in which this characteristic is more distinctly ex- hibited. In such languages the verbs contain a variety of adverbial elements — first, of condition and time, giving rise to mood and tense, and second, of manner and place; each one a distinct adver- bial element. Again, in such words the subject pronoun with its adjective qualifiers appears. So that in these lower languages a single word, usually called the verb, is a combination of many parts of speech. In such language, sentences are imperfectly developed, and this from the fact that the elements of a sentence, namely, parts of speech, are not clearly differentiated as distinct words. There are many ways in which this synthesis or holophrasm of the lower languages is brought about. For example, the savage 200 TRANSACTIONS OP THE falls into curious habits in counting, by expressing in words the complete act of counting. Suppose he is counting skins of animals, and in doing so places one on another until his collection is counted. While in the act of counting he says, "I put i on; I put 2 on; I put 3 on; I put 4 on; I put 5 on;" pari passu with the several acts. These little sentences expressive of the act, modified and cut short in various ways, come to be the names of the numbers applied to such objects as are counted in this manner. At another time per- haps he is counting arrows, and then his expressions will be, "Hay I down ; I lay 2 beside ; I lay 3 beside ; I lay 4 beside ; I lay 5 beside; I lay 6 beside; " &c. By constant exercise in this method of counting, the expressions for the act of counting come to be worn and used simply as the names of numbers for counting arrows- and similar objects. In a like manner different series of names for the same numbers are developed and used in the counting of a particu- lar class of objects, and they are therefore called by grammarians Numeral Classifiers. There is a great variety of ways by which holo- phrastic words are formed through combination ; and the languages in which this characteristic appears in the most prominent manner are often called synthetic, holophrastic, &c. In the progress of languages holophrastic words are worn out and eliminated, and in lieu thereof parts of speech are differentiated. Languages differ from one another in this respect only in degree ; all are more or less holophrastic. To the extent that names express number and gender they are holophrastic. To the extent that pro- nouns express person, number, gender, and case, they are holo- phrastic. And to the extent that verbs express person, number, gender, condition or mode, time or tense, &c., they are holophras- tic. In fact, the verbs, even of the highest languages, are not simple parts of speech. Should there come to be a language in which the parts of speech are wholly differentiated, there could be but one verb — the predicant. The verb to be in the English language is nearly such. By the differentiation of the parts of speech the sen- tence is integrated, and thus language is organized. Now progress in language is characterized by the specialization of the grammatic devices and the organization of the sentence. The same device may be used to perform various functions, and various devices may be used to perform the same function. Com- plete specialization requires that there shall be but one function for a device and but one device for a function. To illustrate this in the ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 201 simplest manner, consider the methods by which the important word in a sentence is designated. In English this is mainly done by emphasis. In other languages the important word is put first or last ; it is therefore designated by arrangement. In still other languages an important word is intensified by adding to it some other word or particle by which its meaning seems to be strengthened; this is by combination, a method frequently observed in Greek and Latin. Thus three devices may be used to perform the same function. Again, combination may be used to strengthen words, as shown above. Combination may be used to qualify the meaning of a word — that is, a particl? may be added to a word to change its meaning more or less. Something may be added to a word to ex- press its relations to other words in the sentence — /.