Note 262.5 — RITUAL AND BELIEF (continued 2)

Many nations add to their other rites that of laceration or even mutilation of the body. In Central Australia the Warramunga women fight with one another and cut one another’s scalps, and all who stand in any near relation to the deceased, reckoned according to the classificatory system—which greatly widens the area of relationship—also cut their own scalps open with yam-sticks, the actual widows even searing the wound with red-hot fire-sticks.262.5 It was forbidden to the ancient Hebrews, by what was evidently a reform of a pre-existing custom, to make a baldness between the eyes for the dead—in other words, to cut themselves on the brow.262.6 Among the Arawaks a drinking-feast is held, at which all the men of the village assemble and scourge one another with whips made of a climbing plant, until the blood runs in streams and strips of skin and muscle hang down. Those who participate in the rite often die of their wounds.262.7 As if mere wounding were not enough, finger-joints are frequently cut off. In the Fiji Islands the amputation of a finger-joint is a common sign of mourning. In one case in Tonga when a king died orders were issued that one hundred fingers should be cut off.263.1 In Montana, one of the north-western states of America, on the execution of four aborigines for murder in December 1890, they were mourned by two squaws, who scalped their children. One of them gashed her own face, while the other cut off two of her fingers and threw them into the grave.263.2 When a Charrua dies his widow and his married daughters and sisters amputate each of them a finger-joint, besides inflicting other wounds on themselves.263.3