84 CEREMONIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



any day be seen a heap of small crosses, severally made of 

 two bits of lath nailed together. Intrinsically of no more 

 value than these straws, sticks, and stones the Peruvians 

 offered, they similarly force on our attention the truth that 

 the act of presentation passes into a ceremony expressing 

 the wish to conciliate. How natural is this substitution of 

 a nominal giving for a real giving, where a real giving is 

 impracticable, we arc shown even by intelligent animals. A 

 retriever, accustomed to please his master by fetching killed 

 birds, &c., will fall into the habit at other times of fetching 

 things to show his desire to please. On first seeing in the 

 morning some one he is friendly with, he will add to his 

 demonstrations of joy, the seeking and bringing in his 

 mouth a dead leaf, a twig, or any small available object 

 lying near. And, while serving to show the natural genesis 

 of this propitiatory ceremony, his behaviour serves also to 

 show how deep down there begins the process of symboliza- 

 tion; and how, at the outset, the symbolic act is as near a 

 repetition of the act symbolized as circumstances allow. 

 Prepared as we thus are to trace the development of 

 gift-making into a ceremony, let us now observe its several 

 varieties, and the social arrangements eventually derived 

 from them. 



3G9. In headless tribes, and in tribes of which the 

 headship is unsettled, and in tribes of which the headship 

 though settled is feeble, making presents does not become 

 an established usage. Australians, Tasmanians, Fuegians 

 are instances; and on reading through accounts of wild 

 American races that are little organized, like the Esqui 

 maux, Chinooks, Snakes, Comanches, Chippewas, or are 

 organized in a democratic manner, like the Iroquois and 

 the Creeks, we find, along with absence of strong personal 

 rule, scarcely any mention of gift-making as a political ob 

 servance. 



In apt contrast come accounts of usages among those 



