Defensive Armor of the Archaic Period 185 



to detach the coins from the armor, nor to lift them sufficiently to enable 

 one to read the reverse, as they are fastened very tightly. Certainly, I 

 do not mean to say that the armor itself originated at the end of the 

 eighteenth century, though of course this might be possible; while it is 

 conceivable also that the coins, on arrival in Alaska, were kept in a family ; 

 or bequeathed to some member of it, and were attached to the cuirass 

 at a much later date. x 



It is curious that in the Chou li no mention is made of helmets. A 

 reference to them was presumably contained in the lost chapter Se kia, 

 "the Superintendents of Armor," an office dealing with the business of 

 defensive and offensive armor. In the Shi king, in one of the songs of 

 the country of Lu, helmets adorned with shells (pei chou) are mentioned. 

 The shells, as is explained by the commentaries, were connected, and 

 attached to the helmets by means of strings of vermilion color. 2 The 

 helmets were nothing but round leather caps, corresponding to the 

 galea of the Romans. 



Armor and helmet were designed to create the impression of strength 

 and bravery, and to inspire such fear that the enemy did not dare to 

 attack the wearer. 3 They were considered valuable objects and were 

 presented as gifts. 4 



The regular force which a great state could at the utmost bring into 

 the field consisted of a thousand chariots. 6 Each chariot contained 



1 F. Ratzel (Uber die Stabchenpanzer, Sitzungsberichte der bayerischen Akademie, 

 1886, p. 191), who mentions such coin armor among the Tlingit, derives it from the 

 idea of armor-scales, and remarks that motives of protection and decoration here 

 come into close contact with each other. The idea of a scale armor, however, is ex- 

 cluded in such specimens as the one figured by Hough (Primitive American Armor, 

 Plate XXI, Fig. 1) where the coins are strung loosely and at some distance from one 

 another, so that protection from them, if any at all, could only amount to a minimum. 

 Further, the conspicuous absence of scale armor on the entire continent of America 

 conflicts with the view that the comparatively recent coin armor might be the imita- 

 tion of scale armor. The coins have a merely ornamental purpose, and possibly also 

 the function of amulets or magic protection; as such, these two ideas being com- 

 bined, we find Chinese coins sewed on to every-day garments among the Gold and 

 the Gilyak on the Amur; and as the common Chinese people are themselves in the 

 habit of wearing old coins as charms, it seems very plausible that the example of the 

 Chinese may have served as an incentive to the Amur tribes, and that Russian trad- 

 ers, familiar with the customs of Siberian peoples, may have suggested the same prac- 

 tice to the tribes of Alaska. 



2 Legge, Chinese Classics, Vol. IV, p. 626. 



3 Li ki, ed. Couvreur, Vol. I, p. 52; Vol. II, p. 492. 



4 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 41; Vol. II, pp. 17, 18. 



5 The war-chariot is generally believed to have arisen in Babylonia, and to have 

 spread from this centre to Egypt, Greece, Iran, and India. But the great antiquity 

 which the war-chariot may claim in China prevents us from accepting the conclusion 

 that it was plainly derived there from Babylonia in historical times. Like many other 

 basic factors of ancient Chinese culture, it ranges in the class of those acquisitions 

 which ancient China has in common with western Asia, and which go back to a re- 

 mote prehistoric age. To these belong the mode of agriculture, the cultivation of 



