TROPHIES. 41 



351. The head of an enemy is of inconvenient bulk; 

 and when the journey home is long there arises the question 

 cannot proof that an enemy has been killed be given by 

 carrying back a part only? In some places the savage in 

 fers that it can, and acts on the inference. 



This modification and its meaning are well shown in 

 Ashantee, where &quot; the general in command sends to the capi 

 tal the jaw-bones of the slain enemies/ When first found, 

 the Tahitians, too, displayed in triumph their dead foes 

 jaw-bones; and Cook saw fifteen of them fastened up at the 

 end of a house. Similarly of Yate, where &quot; the greater the 

 chief, the greater the display of bones,&quot; we read that if a 

 slain enemy was &quot; one who spoke ill of the chief, his jaws are 

 hung up in the chief s house as a trophy: &quot; a tacit threat to 

 others who vilified him. A recent account of another Papuan 

 race inhabiting Boigu, on the coast of Kew Guinea, further 

 illustrates the practice, and also its social effect. Mr. Stone 

 writes : &quot; By nature these people are bloody and warlike 

 among themselves, frequently making raids to the Big 

 Land, and returning in triumph with the heads and jaw 

 bones of their slaughtered victims, the latter becoming the 

 property of the murderer, and the former of him who de 

 capitates the body. The jawbone is consequently held as 

 the most valued trophy, and the more a man possesses, the 

 greater he becomes in the eyes of his fellow-men.&quot; Add 

 that in South America some tribes of Tupis, in honouring 

 a victorious warrior, &quot; hung the mouth [of his victim] upon 

 his arm like a bracelet.&quot; 



With the display of jaws as trophies, there may be named 

 a kindred use of teeth. America furnishes instances. The 

 Caribs &quot; strung together the teeth of such of their enemies 

 as they had slain in battle, and wore them on their legs and 

 arms.&quot; The Tupis, after devouring a captive, preserved 

 &quot; the teeth strung in necklaces.&quot; The Moxos women wore 

 &quot; a necklace made of the teeth of enemies killed by their 

 husbands in battle.&quot; The Central Americans made an im- 



