22 PRIMITIVE TREPHINING IN PERU (ETH. ANN. 16 
trial by ordeal, as among our own ancestors; yet invocation and sacri- 
fice persist, and amulets retain their hold. By Powell these stages in 
the development of belief ave respectively denominated hecastotheism, 
zootheism, and physitheism.! Some knowledge of these stages in the 
development of belief is requisite for comprehension of the motives 
and mental operations of primitive men. 
There is a human trait characteristic of all stages of development, 
and especially prominent in the earlier stages, which bears directly 
on the discussion of the motives of early men; it results in what may 
be called the Lav of the development of fable. The mind is so consti- 
tuted as to demand explanations; at the same time it is prone to offer 
and accept the chaff of hypotheses in lien of the grain of full under- 
standing; and these tendencies are specially prominent in the com- 
munion of children and adults. A pertinent illustration of the trait is 
the development of belief in shades of the departed, which is,*’in many 
respects, parallel to the recognition of mysterious potencies or doubles | 
of things in hecastotheism. The hunter dies; the sages of the clan or 
tribe, warned by experience, forestall dispute concerning future owner- 
ship of the favorite weapon by burying it with his body. The children 
ask why the weapon was buried, and their elders, ignorant of the real 
reason, say the hunter still has need of it; so the children are strength- 
ened in their notion of mysterious potencies, and think of the hunter 
as still using his favorite weapon in a mystical hunting ground. But 
in all stages of development, belief runs a close race against cupidity, 
and is sometimes distanced; so the sages learn that even a buried 
weapon may be a source of contention, which they thenceforward fore- 
stall by breaking or burning it. Again the children ask why, and the 
ill advised elders are put to the further explanation that the broken or 
burned weapon is none the less serviceable to the dead hunter, since it 
is thereby changed only as he is changed; so the hypothesis of myste- 
rious shades is strengthened and extended to weapons, and eventually 
to favorite animals, as well as to the huntsmen and their consorts. In 
time the easily satisfied children become the sages of their clan or 
tribe, and lay down simple yet definite laws in accordance with their 
early notions concerning shades. They are unable to find the shadowy 
hunting ground, and consequently argue that if must be a long way 
off, and that the dead hunter must needs be provisioned against 
the journey; so food and drink are buried or burned with the dead, 
and the children are regaled with enriched hypotheses; and threugh 
the union of natural affection, belief, and ceremonial the lifeless body 
becomes a doubly mysterious and sacred thing, and, if the stage of 
development is that of syneedochism, a mysteriously potent thing. 
This is only one of the ways in which the primitive (and even mod- 
ern) tendency to explain by half knowledge is developed into motive- 
shaping belief; the ways are legion. 
'The subject of primitive belief is developed somewhat more fully in ‘‘The Siouan Indians,” 
Fifteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, for 1892-93, (1897) pp. 153-204. 
