398 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



names with Europeans, as a proof of brotherly feeling. This, which 

 is a widely-diffused practice, arises from the belief that the name is a 

 part of the individual. Possessing a man's name is equivalent to pos- 

 sessing something that forms a portion of his being, and enables the 

 possessor to work mischief to him; and hence, among numerous 

 peoples, a reason for studiously concealing names. To exchange 

 names, therefore, is to establish some participation in one another's 

 being, and at the same time to trust each with power over the other, 

 implying great mutual confidence. 



It is a usage among the people of Vate, "when they wish to make 

 peace, to kill one or rnore of their own people, and send the body to 

 those with whom they have been fighting to eat ; " and, in Samoa, 

 "it is the custom, on the submission of one party to another, to bow 

 down before their conquerors, each with a piece of fire-wood and a 

 bundle of leaves, such as are used in dressing a pig for the oven " 

 (bamboo-knives being sometimes added), "as much as to say, 'Kill 

 us and cook us, if you please.' " These facts I name because they 

 clearly show a point of departure from which there might arise an 

 apparently artificial ceremony. Let the traditions of cannibalism 

 among the Samoans disappear, and this surviving custom of present- 

 ing fire-wood, leaves, and knives, as a sign of submission, would, in 

 pursuance of the ordinary method of interpretation, be taken for an 

 observance deliberately devised. 



That peace should be signified among the Dakotas by burying 

 the tomahawk, and among the Brazilians by a present of bows and 

 arrows, may be cited as instances of what is in a sense symboliza- 

 tion, but what is in origin a modification of the action symbolized ; 

 for cessation of fighting is necessitated by putting away weapons, or 

 by giving weapons to an antagonist. If, as among the civilized, a 

 conquered antagonist delivers up his sword, the act of so making 

 himself defenseless is an act of personal submission ; but eventually 

 it comes to be, on the part of a general, a sign that his army surren- 

 ders. Similarly, when, as in parts of Africa, " some of the free blacks 

 become slaves voluntarily by going through the simple but significant 

 ceremony of breaking a spear in the presence of their future master," 

 we may properly say that the relation thus artificially established is 

 as near an approach as may be to the relation established when an 

 enemy, whose weapon is broken, is made a slave by his captor: the 

 symbolic transaction simulates the actual transaction. 



An instructive example comes next. I refer to the bearing of 

 green boughs as a sign of peace, as an act of propitiation, and as a 

 religious ceremony. As indicating peace the custom occurs among 

 the Araucanians, Australians, Tasmanians, New Guinea people, New 

 Caledonians, Sandwich-Islanders, Tahitians, Samoans, New-Zealand- 

 ers; and branches were used by the Hebrews also for propitiatory 

 approach (2 Maccabees xiv. 4). In some cases we find it employed to 



