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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



dress. The same is true of many of the masks of North Amer- 

 ican tribes. Similar in idea are the curious and often really beau- 

 tiful neck-girdles of red cedar bark worn by the secret religious 

 organizations of the Kwakiutl and their neighbors in the far 

 Northwest. 



Somewhat akin to dress worn by worshipers and servants are 

 those garments worn by victims who are to be sacrificed to the 

 gods. At Teotihuacan in Mexico there have been and still are 

 found great numbers of neatly made little terra-cotta heads of 

 human beings. These are exceedingly various in design, the 

 differences being most marked in the head-dresses. There is con- 

 siderable uncertainty as to the purpose of these little heads, but 

 Mrs. Zelia Nuttall has written an article wherein is offered an 

 explanation that seems plausible. She suggests that they were 

 buried with the dead, and that the head-dresses represent those 

 worn by victims for sacrifice. That such victims were differently 

 adorned for different gods is certain, and it may be that these 

 pretty little relics really give representations of the way in which 

 they were dressed. 



Some time perhaps civilized peoples will give up the wearing 

 of mourning for the dead. Why should any men or women force 

 their private griefs upon all about them ? Why increase the dole- 

 fulness of death ? No doubt many who wear black would say 



that they do so from 

 respect for the dead. 

 Is it not in reality 

 because fashion dic- 

 tates it ? Mourning 

 dress is nothing new, 

 nor is it confined to 

 civilized races. Nor 

 is the color of mourn- 

 ing a fixed thing. 

 Black is very widely 

 used, but some peo- 

 ples use white. In 

 New Zealand old people paint themselves freely with red ochre 

 and wear wreaths of green leaves. Besides the wearing of a pe- 

 culiar garb or of a special color to show grief, the mourners may 

 disfigure themselves, or they may wear some relic of the dead 

 friend. The curious practice of cutting off joints of the fingers is 

 wide-spread. Among some American tribes, among Australians, 

 Africans, and Polynesians it is a sign of grief. The Fijians used 

 to chop off finger-joints to appease an angry chieftain, or for death 

 of a relative, or as a token of affection. In Tonga finger-joints 

 were cut when a superior relative was ill. In all these cases pres- 



(.'.VRVEii St"NE Charms. Alaska. 



