MUTILATIONS. 79 



personal slavery and becoming marks of political and 

 religious subordination, they play a part like that of 

 oaths of fealty and pious self-dedications. Moreover, being 

 acknowledgments of submission to a ruler, visible or in 

 visible, they enforce authority by making conspicuous the 

 extent of his sway. And where they signify class-subjec 

 tion, as well as where they show the subjugation of crimi 

 nals, they further strengthen the regulative agency. 



If mutilations originate as alleged, some connexion 

 must exist between the extent to which they are carried and 

 the social type. On grouping the facts as presented by 

 fifty-two peoples, the connexion emerges with as much 

 clearness as can be expected. In the first place, since 



mutilation originates with conquest and resulting aggre 

 gation, it is inferable that simple societies, however savage, 

 will be less characterized by it than the larger savage socie 

 ties compounded out of such, and less than even semi-civil 

 ized societies. This proves to be true. Of peoples who 

 form simple societies that practice mutilation either not at 

 all or in slight forms, I find eleven Fuegians, Yeddahs, 

 Andamanese, Dyaks, Todas, Gonds, Santals, Bodo and 

 Dhimals, Mishmis, Kamstchadales, Snake Indians; and 

 these are characterized throughout either by absence of 

 chieftainship, or by chieftainship of an unsettled kind. 

 Meanwhile, of peoples who mutilate little or not at all, I 

 find but two in the class of uncivilized compound societies; 

 of which one, the Kirghiz, is characterized by a wandering 

 life that makes subordination difficult; and the other, the 

 Iroquois, had a republican form of government. Of socie 

 ties practising mutilations that are moderate, the simple 

 bear a decreased ratio to the compound: of the one class 

 there are ten Tasmanians, Tannese, ^N&quot;ew Guinea people, 

 Karens, Nagas, Ostyaks, Esquimaux, Chinooks, Comanches, 

 Chippewayans ; while of the other class there are five New 

 Zealanders, East Africans, Khonds, Kukis, Kalmucks. 

 And of these it is to be remarked, that in the one class the 



