EVOLUTION OF CEREMONIAL GOVERNMENT. 657 



given to them in ancient Mexico, where, when a child was dedicated 

 to Quetzalcohuatl, " the priest made a slight cut with a knife on its 

 breast, as a sign that it belonged to the cult and service of the god," 

 and, like those still avowedly given to them by negroes in Angola, 

 where in many regions every child as soon as born is tattooed on the 

 belly, in order thereby to dedicate it to a certain fetich. 



A significant group of evidences must be added. We have seen 

 that, where cropped hair implies servitude, long hair becomes an hon- 

 orable distinction ; that, shorn beards being marks of subordination, 

 unshorn beards are marks of supremacy ; and that, occasionally, in 

 opposition to circumcision, as associated with subjection, there is 

 absence of it along with the highest power. Here we have a parallel 

 antithesis. The great divine chief of the Tongans is unlike all other 

 men in Tonga, not only as being uncircumcised, but also as being 

 untattooed. Elsewhere classes are sometimes thus distinguished. 

 Burton says of the people of Banza Nokkoi, on the Congo, that those 

 who are tattooed " are generally slaves." And in this relation there 

 may be significance in the statement of Boyle that "the Kyans, 

 Pakatans, and Kennowits, alone in Borneo practise tattooing, and 

 these are the three aboriginal races least esteemed for bravery." 

 Not, however, that distinctions implied by tattooing and its absence 

 are at all regular : we here meet with anomalies. Though in some 

 places showing social inferiority, tattooing in other places is a trait 

 of the superior. While in Feejee only the women are tattooed while 

 in Tahiti there is tattooing of both men and women, in the Sandwich 

 Islands the men are more tattooed than the women. Sometimes the 

 presence of this skin-mutilation is evidence of high rank. " In the 

 province of Panuco, the noblemen were easily to be distinguished, 

 as they had their bodies tattooed." But the occurrence of anomalies 

 is not surprising. During the perpetual overrunnings of race by 

 race, it must sometimes have happened that, an untattooed race hav- 

 ing been conquered by one which practised tattooing, the presence of 

 these markings became associated with social supremacy. Moreover, 

 since, along with dispersions of tribes and obscurings of their tra- 

 ditions, the meanings of mutilations will often die, while they them- 

 selves survive, there may not unnaturally occur developments of 

 them for purposes of display, tending to reverse their original sig- 

 nificance ; as seems implied by the statement of Angas that " tattooing 

 is a class distinction among the New-Zealanders; the faces of slaves 

 have not the spiral tattooing;" or that of Dobrizhoffer, that "every 

 Abiponian woman you see has a different pattern on her face. Those 

 that are most painted and pricked you may know to be of high rank 

 and noble birth." 



But a further cause exists for this conflict of meanings. There 

 remains to be named a species of skin-mutilation having another ori- 

 gin and different implication. 



VOL. XII. 42 



