MUTILATIONS. 73 



hateful to him.&quot; And if refusal to adopt the family-mark 

 where it is painted on the body, is thus regarded as a kind 

 of disloyalty, equally will it be so when the mark is one 

 that has arisen from modified lacerations; and such refusal 

 will be tantamount to rebellion where the mark signifies 

 descent from, and submission to, some great father of the 

 race. Hence such facts as the following: &quot; All these In- 

 &quot; dians &quot; says Cieza of the ancient Peruvians, &quot; wear certain 

 &quot; marks by which they are known, and which were used 

 by &quot; their ancestors.&quot; &quot; Both &quot;sexes of the Sandwich Isl 

 anders have a particular mark (tattooed) which seems to 

 indicate the district in which, or the chief under whom, they 

 lived.&quot;* 



That a special form of tattooing becomes a tribal mark in 

 the way suggested, we have, indeed, some direct evidence. 

 Among the Sandwich Islanders, funeral rites at the death 

 of a chief, such as knocking out teeth, cutting the ears, &c., 

 one is tattooing a spot on the tongue. Here we see this 

 mutilation becoming a sign of allegiance to a ruler who 

 has died; and then, when the deceased ruler, unusually 

 distinguished, is apotheosized, the tattoo mark becomes the 

 sign of obedience to him as a deity. &quot; &quot;With several 

 Eastern nations,&quot; says Grimm, &quot; it was a custom to mark 

 oneself by a burnt or incised sign as adherent to a certain 

 worship.&quot; It was thus with the Hebrews. Remembering 

 that they were forbidden to mark themselves for the dead, 

 we shall see the meaning of the passage in Deuteronomy 

 &quot; They have corrupted themselves, the spot is not the spot 

 of his children: they are a perverse and crooked genera 

 tion.&quot; And that such contrasted spots were understood in 



* While this chapter is standing in type, I have come upon a passage in 

 Bancroft, concerning the Indians of the Isthmus of Darien fully verifying the 

 general interpretation given. He says : &quot; Every principal man retained a 

 number of prisoners as bondsmen ; they . . . were branded or tattooed with 

 the particular mark of the owner on the face or arm, or had one of their front 

 teeth extracted.&quot; 



