202 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



was developed by the construction of a ritual. So far as can be seen, 

 knowledge that works, even among primitive men, is always arrived at 

 by experimentation. Though it is likely that in this particular case the 

 Blackfoot Indians learned the whole process from strangers, it is certain 

 that each step in the process was originally worked out in some definite 

 locality and the working out of these methods, while in a large measure 

 due to the experience of many, quite likely received its final formalization 

 at the hands of a single individual. This individual was the teacher. 



Assuming that this is the condition leading to the formalization of 

 the tobacco-planting procedure, and that it is fundamentally based upon 

 material experiment, how can we account for the seemingly useless cere- 

 monial accompaniments? In the case of culture traits like the tobacco 

 planting of the Blackfoot Indians the problem is always complicated by 

 already existing patterns, or method concepts. Thus it may come to he 

 regarded as axiomatic that to succeed any process must be carried out in 

 a ceremonial manner, or that mere social usage demands that it be so. 

 If either or both of these conceptions prevail, it is clear that the original 

 formalizer of the tobacco planting process would give it a ceremonial 

 dress by introducing into it the more or less conventionalized ceremonial 

 units prevailing in his group. If it was the custom of his people to give 

 some weight to peculiar personal dreams, then also some of his dream 

 experiences might be incorporated. The total construct then result- 

 ing would be a tobacco-planting ritual of which the Blackfoot example 

 is typical. Yet this complication need not obscure the essential factor 

 in the case, for, eliminating this " following of existing patterns," we 

 have revealed the backbone of the ritual, the concrete demonstration of 

 processes empirically determined. 



Perhaps if we compare the conditions among primitive groups with 

 those under which we ourselves live the case may be clearer. If tobacco 

 planting as a new agricultural trait should be introduced to us, its 

 demonstrator would reduce the necessary directions to writing or cast his 

 oral directions in a form easily reduced to writing. Such writings would 

 then be credited by some authority to furnish the sanctions for the pro- 

 cedure, take certain conventional forms as books, periodicals and lectures, 

 and conform to a certain standards of literary style. Thus we should 

 construct what may be considered a text-book, which, whether written 

 or not, would take the same essential form. 



Now, among primitive groups the machinery for perpetuating and 

 standardizing knowledge of this kind is the ritual. The objective 

 method of written records not having been developed, we find in its 

 place a memorized formula whose seriousness and sanction seems to be 

 found in its ceremonial setting. We may safely conclude then that one 

 of the chief functions of a planting or hunting ritual is the perpetuation 

 of the method involved and that whatever may have been the conditions 

 underlying its inception, it grew naturally out of the perpetuation of the 



