552 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



being that anything done to a preserved part of a corpse is done to 

 the corresponding part of the ghost ; and that thus a ghost may he 

 coerced by maltreating a relic. Hence the origin of sorcery all over 

 the world ; hence the rattle of dead men's bones so prevalent with 

 primitive medicine-men ; hence " the powder ground from the bones 

 of the dead " used by the Peruvian necromancers ; hence the portions 

 of corpses which our own traditions of witchcraft name as used in 

 composing charms. 



Besides proving victory over an enemy, the trophy therefore 

 serves for the subjugation of his ghost ; and that possession of it is, 

 at any rate, in some cases, supposed to make his ghost a slave, we 

 have good evidence. The primitive belief everywhere found, that 

 the doubles of men and animals slain at the grave accompany the 

 double of the deceased, to serve him in the other world the belief 

 which leads here to the immolation of wives, who are to manage the 

 future household of the departed, there to the sacrifice of horses 

 needed to carry him on his journey after death, and elsewhere to the 

 killing of dogs as guides is a belief which, in many places, initiates 

 the kindred belief that, by placing portions of bodies on his tomb, the 

 men and animals they belonged to are made subject to the deceased. 

 Hence the bones of cattle, etc., w T ith which graves are in many cases 

 decorated ; hence the placing on graves the heads of enemies or 

 slaves, as above indicated ; and hence a like use of the scalp. Con- 

 cerning the Osages, Mr. Tylor cites from McCoy and Waitz the fact 

 that they sometimes " plant on the cairn raised over a corpse a pole 

 with an enemy's scalp hanging to the top. Their notion was that, by 

 taking an enemy and suspending his scalp over the grave of a de- 

 ceased friend, the spirit of the victim became subjected to the spirit 

 of the buried warrior in the land of spirits." The Ojibways have a 

 like practice, of which a like idea is probably the cause. 



A collateral devolopment of trophy-taking, which eventually has 

 a share in governmental regulation, must not be forgotten. I refer 

 to the display of parts of the bodies of criminals. 



In our more advanced minds the enemy, the criminal, and the 

 slave, are well discriminated ; but they are little discriminated by 

 the primitive man. Almost or quite devoid as he is of the feelings 

 and ideas we call moral holding by force whatever he owns, wrest- 

 ing from the weaker the woman or other object he has possession of, 

 killing his own child without hesitation if it is an incumbi*ance, or his 

 wife if she offends him, and sometimes proud of being a recognized 

 killer of his fellow-tribesmen the savage has no distinct ideas of 

 right and wrong in the abstract. The immediate pleasures or pains 

 they give are his sole reasons for classing things and acts as good or 

 bad. Hence, hostility and the injuries he suffers from it excite in 

 him the same feeling, whether the aggressor is without the tribe or 



