EVOLUTION OF CEREMONIAL GOVERNMENT. 549 



slain." Noses, again, are in some cases chosen as easily-enumerated 

 trophies. Anciently, by Constantine V., " a plate of noses was ac- 

 cepted as a grateful offering ; " and, at the present time, the noses 

 they have taken are carried by soldiers to their leaders in Montenegro. 

 That the slain Turks thus deprived of their noses, even to the extent 

 of 500 on one battle-field, were so treated in retaliation for the de- 

 capitations the Turks had been guilty of, is true ; but this excuse 

 does not alter the fact that "the Montenegrin chiefs could not be 

 persuaded to give up the practice of paying their clansmen for the 

 number of noses produced." 



The ancient Mexicans, having for gods their deified cannibal an- 

 cestors, in whose worship the most horrible rites were daily performed, 

 in some cases took as trophies the entire skins of the vanquished. 

 " The first prisoner made in a war was flayed alive. The soldier who 

 had captured him dressed himself in his bleeding skin, and thus, for 

 some days, served the god of battles. . . . He who was dressed in 

 the skin walked from one temple to another; men and women followed 

 him, shouting for joy." While we here see that the trophy was 

 taken by the victor primarily as a proof of his prowess, we are also 

 shown how there resulted a religious ceremony : the trophy was dis- 

 played for the supposed gratification of deities delighting in blood- 

 shed. There is further evidence that this was the intention. "At 

 the festival of the goldsmiths' god Totec, one of the priests put on 

 the skin of a captive, and, being so dressed, he was the image of that 

 god Totec." Nebel (plate 3, Fig. 1) gives the basalt figure of a priest 

 (or idol) clothed in a human skin ; and additional evidence is yielded 

 by the custom of the neighboring state of Yucatan, where "the 

 bodies were thrown down the steps, flayed, the priest put on the 

 skins, and danced, and the body was buried in the yard of the tem- 

 ple. They took prisoners in war for these sacrifices, and condemned 

 some of their own people to them." 



Usually, however, the skin-trophy is relatively small: the require- 

 ment being simply that it shall be one of which the body yields no 

 duplicate. The origin of it is well shown by the following descrip- 

 tion of a practice among the Abipones. They preserve the heads of 

 enemies, and 



" When apprehension of approaching hostilities obliges them to remove to 

 places of greater security, they strip the heads of the skin, cutting it from ear 

 to ear beneath the nose, and dexterously pulling it off along with the hair. . . . 

 That Abipon who has most of these skins at home excels the rest in military 



renown." 



Evidently, however, the whole skin is not needful to prove previous 

 possession of a head: the part covering the crown of the head, dis- 

 tinguished from other parts by the arrangement of its hairs, serves 

 the purpose : hence scalping. Tales of Indian life have so far familiar- 



