56 CEREMONIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



flowed from the stump where, shortly before, his little finger 

 had been cut off, as a token of affection for his deceased fath 

 er. &quot; This propitiation of the dead by offering fingers, 

 or parts of them, occurs elsewhere. When, among the 

 Charruas, the head of the family died, &quot; the daughters, 

 widow, and married sisters were obliged to have, each one 

 joint from the finger cut off; and this was repeated for 

 every relation of the like character who died: the primary 

 amputation being from the little finger.&quot; By the Mandans, 

 the usual mode of expressing grief on the death of a relation 

 &quot; w r as to lose two joints of the little fingers, or sometimes 

 the other fingers.&quot; A like custom was found among the 

 Dacotahs and various other American tribes. Sacrificed 

 in this way to the ghost of the dead relative, or the dead 

 chief, to express that subjection which would have pacified 

 him while alive, the amputated finger becomes, in other 

 cases, a sacrifice to the expanded ghost or god. During his 

 initiation the Mandan warrior, &quot; holding up the little finger 

 of his left hand to the Great Spirit, he expresses to Him, in 

 a speech of a few words, his willingness to give it as a sacri 

 fice; when he lays it 011 the dried buffalo skull, where the 

 other chops it off near the hand with a blow of the hatchet. 7 

 And the natives of Tonga cut off a portion of the little fin 

 ger as a sacrifice to the gods, for the recovery of a superior 

 sick relative. 



Originally expressing submission to powerful beings 

 alive and dead, this mutilation in some cases becomes, appar 

 ently, a mark of domestic subordination. The Australians 

 have a custom of cutting off the last joint of the little finger 

 of females; and a Hottentot &quot; widow, who marries a second 

 time, must have the top joint of a finger cut off, and loses 

 another joint for the third, and so on for each time that she 

 enters into wedlock.&quot; 



As showing the way in which these propitiatory mutila 

 tions of the hands are made so as to interfere least with 

 usefulness, it may be noted that habitually they begin with 



