PRIMITIVE RITUALISTIC CEREMONIES 201 



ritual while no less elaborate is objectively associated with a ceremonial 

 bundle, in which the seed is kept and guarded by the official keeper of 

 the whole. In both cases each important step in the process from seed to 

 pipe is one of the fundamentals in a ritual. Many such examples can 

 be found in the special literature of the subject. 



If now we give our attention exclusively to planting rituals certain 

 points of general import may be noted. As a convenient example, we 

 may abstract the following from the data on tobacco culture among the 

 Blackf oot Indians : At the planting of the tobacco seed the leading men 

 hold a feast to which they invite their friends. Eight young men are 

 sent out to gather deer, antelope and mountain-sheep dung. They use 

 this dung because these animals run fast and therefore the tobacco will 

 grow rapidly. They do not use the dung of the elk and moose because 

 the animals walk slowly and would thereby delay the growth of the to- 

 bacco. The leading men give a feast which lasts four days, during which 

 they dance and sing. The dung is then mashed up together with serv- 

 ice berries, and tobacco leaves and water are added. All these make the 

 tobacco seed ready to plant. The seed is now given out among the 

 planters. To prepare the soil a lot of brush is gathered by all the men, 

 women, and children and spread on the ground. At each of the four 

 corners of this place a fire is started, four men watching the fire so as to 

 prevent it from spreading further. After all the brush has been burnt, 

 they make small brooms of brush with which the place is swept clean. 

 Then a number of men procure sticks with curved roots or having curves 

 that can serve as handles. The straight end of this stick is sharpened 

 and used for digging up the ground. With these sharpened sticks they 

 make holes about a foot apart and two inches deep in a row and the 

 ground is divided up into sections in which each man plants his seeds. 

 The seeds are dropped into these holes, the children covering them up 

 by running back and forth over them four times. Should a child fall 

 while doing this, ill luck would surely follow, and the child will die. 

 After the seeds have been planted incense offerings are made on the 

 four corners of the plot and the songs of the ritual sung. 



This part of the tobacco ritual is clearly but a formal expression of 

 the recognized method of planting tobacco. We see that the seed is pre- 

 pared for germination, the seeds and roots of all intrusive plants killed 

 by burning over the surface, the soil leveled and pulverized, then effec- 

 tively fertilized and the seed planted in a definite way. What after all 

 is the ritual in this case, but a formalized statement of how tobacco 

 should be planted to secure a good crop ? 



We also note the existence of specific knowledge of the conditions for 

 tobacco growing, which certainly deserves to be considered scientific. 

 The problem then arises as to how this knowledge came to be associated 

 with a ritual. While we have no direct data as to how the Indian ar- 

 rived at this knowledge, there is no good ground for believing that it 



VOL. LXXXVII. 14. 



