ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 85 



among the Indian tribes who have not become so< "white ' as the 

 Algonkins and the Iroquois, but who present a more genuine picture 

 of old American life, do often, and in the most vivid way, present 

 traces of the same phenomena with which one is so familiar in old- 

 world life. Imagine us sitting in a house just inside California, 

 engaged in what appeared to be a fruitless endeavor on the part 

 of Professor Mosely to obtain a lock of hair of a Mojave to add 

 to liis collection. The man objected utterly. He shook his head. 

 When pressed, he gesticulated and talked. No ; if he gave up that 

 bit of hair, he would become deaf, dumb, grow mad ; and, when the 

 medicine man came to drive away the malady, it would be of no 

 use, he would have to die. Now, all this represents a perfectly old- 

 world group of ideas. If you tried to get a lock of hair in Italy 

 or Spain, you might be met with precisely the same resistance; and 

 you would find that the reason would be absolutely the same as that 

 which the Mojave expressed, — that by means of that lock of hair 

 one can be bewitched, the consequence being disease. And within 

 the civilized world the old philosophy which accounts for disease in 

 general as the intrusion of a malignant spirit still largely remains ; 

 and the exorcising such a demon is practised by white men as a re- 

 ligious rite, even including the act of exsufiflating it, or blowing it 

 away, which our Mojave Indian illustrated by the gesture of blow- 

 ing away an imaginary spirit, and which is well known as forming 

 a part of the religious rites of both the Greek and Roman church. 

 How is it that such correspondence with old-world ceremonies 

 should be found among a tribe like the Mojaves, apparently Mongo- 

 lian people, though separated geographically from the Mongolians 

 of Asia? Why does the civilization, the general state of culture, of 

 the world, present throughout the whole range, in time and space, 

 phenomena so wonderfully similar and uniform ? This question is 

 easy to ask; but it is the question which, in a few words, presents 

 the problem which, to all anthropologists who occupy themselves 

 with the history of culture, is a problem full of the most extreme 

 difficulty, upon which they will have for years to work, collect- 

 ing and classifying facts, in the hope that at some time the lucky 

 touch will be made which will disclose the answer. At present 

 there is none of an absolute character. There is no day in my life 

 ■when I am able to occupy myself with anthropological work, in 

 which my mind does not swing like a pendulum between the two 

 great possible answers to this question. Have the descendants of a 



