6 5 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



nifies descent from, and submission to, some great father of the race. 

 Hence, then, the meaning of such facts as the following : " All these 

 Indians," says Cieza of the ancient Peruvians, "wear certain marks 

 by which they are known, and which were used by their ancestors. 

 . . . Both sexes of the Sandwich-Islanders have a particular mark 

 (tattooed) which seems to indicate the district in which, or the chief 

 under whom, they lived." Of the Uaupes, " one tribe, the Tucanos, 

 are distinguished from the rest by three vertical blue lines on the 

 chin." 



That a special form of tattooing becomes a tribal mark in the way 

 suggested, we have, indeed, some direct evidence. Among sundry mu- 

 tilations undergone as funeral-rites, at the death of a chief among the 

 Sandwich-Islanders, such as knocking out teeth, cutting the ears, cut- 

 ting hair, etc., one is tattooing a spot on the tongue. Here we see 

 this mutilation acquiring the signification of allegiance to a ruler who 

 has died ; and then when the deceased ruler, unusually distinguished, is 

 apotheosized, the tattoo-mark becomes the sign of obedience to him 

 as a deity. " With several Eastern nations," says Grimm, "it was a 

 custom to mark one's self by a burned or incised sign as adherent to 

 a certain worship. . . . Philo complains of his country-people in this 

 respect." It was thus w r ith the Hebrews. Bearing in mind the 

 above-quoted interdict against marking themselves for the dead, w r e 

 shall see the meaning of the words in Deuteronomy " They have cor- 

 rupted themselves, the spot is not the spot of his children : they are a 

 perverse and crooked generation." And that such contrasted spots 

 as are here referred to were understood in later times to imply the 

 service of different deities is suggested by passages in Revelation, 

 where an angel is described as ordering delay " till we have sealed 

 the servants of our God in their foreheads," and where " an hundred 

 and forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in 

 their foreheads," are described as standing on Mount Sion, while an 

 angel proclaims that, " if any man worship the beast and his image, 

 and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall 

 drink of the wine of the wrath of God." Down t the present day in 

 the East like marks have like meanings. Thomson, after specifying 

 the method of tattooing, says : " This practice of marking religious 

 tokens upon the hands and arms is almost universal among the Arabs 

 of all sects and classes. Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem have the 

 operation performed there, as the most holy place known to their re- 

 ligion." And still more definite is the statement of Kalisch, that 

 " Christians in some parts of the East, and European sailors, were 

 long in the habit of marking, by means of punctures and a black dye, 

 their arms and other members of the body with the sign of the cru- 

 cifix or the image of the Virgin; the Mohammedans mark them with 

 the name of Allah." So that down to our own time among advanced 

 races we trace in these skin-mutilations meanings like those avowedly 



