The Medicine-Men of the Apache. (1892 N 09 / 1887-1888 (pages 443-604)). Bourke John Gregory

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СКАЧАТЬ informs me that they sometimes wear the parts of which the 'Lingam' and 'Priapus' were the emblems."150 "The Gippsland people keep the relics of the departed. They will cut off the hands to keep as a remembrance, and these they will attach to the string that is tied round the neck."151

      Smyth also relates that the women of some of the Australian tribes preserve "the hands of some defunct member of the tribe – that of some friend of the woman's, or perhaps one belonging to a former husband. This she keeps as the only remembrance of one she once loved; and, though years may have passed, even now, when she has nothing else to do, she will sit and moan over this relic of humanity. Sometimes a mother will carry about with her the remains of a beloved child, whose death she mourns."152 The Australians also use the skulls of their "nearest and dearest relatives" for drinking vessels; thus, a daughter would use her mother's skull, etc.153

      "One of the most extraordinary of their laws is that a widow, for every husband she marries after the first, is obliged to cut off a joint of a finger, which she presents to her husband on the wedding day, beginning at one of the little fingers."154

      In the Army and Navy Journal, New York, June 23, 1888, is mentioned a battle between the Crow of Montana and the Piegan, in which the former obtained some of the hands and feet of dead warriors of the first-named tribe and used them in their dances.

      Catlin shows that the young Sioux warriors, after going through the ordeal of the sun dance, placed the little finger of the left hand on the skull of a sacred buffalo and had it chopped off.155

      "The sacrifices [of American Indians] at the fasts at puberty sometimes consist of finger joints."156

      In Dodge's Wild Indians is represented (Pl. vi, 13) a Cheyenne necklace of the bones of the first joint of the human fingers, stripped of skin and flesh. I have never seen or heard of anything of the kind, although I have served with the Cheyenne a great deal and have spoken about their customs. My necklace is of human fingers mummified, not of bones.

      Fanny Kelly says of a Sioux chief: "He showed me a puzzle or game he had made from the finger bones of some of the victims that had fallen beneath his own tomahawk. The bones had been freed from the flesh by boiling, and, being placed upon a string, were used for playing some kind of Indian game."157

      Strabo recounts in his third book that the Lusitanians sacrificed prisoners and cut off their right hands to consecrate them to their gods.

      Dulaure says that the Germans attached the heads and the right hands of their human victims to sacred trees.158

      Adoni-bezek cut off the thumbs and great toes of seventy kings of Syria.159

      The necklace of human fingers is not a particle more horrible than the ornaments of human bones to be seen in the cemetery of the Capuchins in Rome at the present day. I have personally known of two or three cases where American Indians cut their enemies limb from limb. The idea upon which the practice is based seems to be the analogue of the old English custom of sentencing a criminal to be "hanged, drawn, and quartered."

      Brand gives a detailed description of the "hand of glory," the possession of which was believed by the peasantry of Great Britain and France to enable a man to enter a house invisible to the occupants. It was made of the hand of an executed (hanged) murderer, carefully desiccated and prepared with a great amount of superstitious mummery. With this holding a candle of "the fat of a hanged man" burglars felt perfectly secure while engaged in their predatory work.160 The belief was that a candle placed in a dead man's hand will not be seen by any but those by whom it is used. Such a candle introduced into a house kept those who were asleep from awakening.

      The superstition in regard to the "hand of glory" was widely diffused throughout France, Germany, Spain, and Great Britain. As late as the year 1831 it was used by Irish burglars in the county Meath.

      Dr. Frank Baker delivered before the Anthropological Society of Washington, D. C., a lecture upon these superstitions as related to the "hand of glory," to which the student is respectfully referred.161

      An Aztec warrior always tried to procure the middle finger of the left hand of a woman who had died in childbirth. This he fastened to his shield as a talisman.162 The great weapon of the Aztec witches was the left arm of a woman who had died in her first childbirth.163 Pliny mentions "still-born infants cut up limb by limb for the most abominable practices, not only by midwives, but by harlots even as well!"164

      The opinions entertained in Pliny's time descended to that of the Reformation —

      Finger of birth-strangled babe,

      Ditch-deliver'd by a drab.165

      "Scrofula, imposthumes of the parotid glands, and throat diseases, they say, may be cured by the contact of the hand of a person who has been carried off by an early death;" but, he goes on to say, any dead hand will do, "provided it is of the same sex as the patient and that the part affected is touched with the back of the left hand."166 A footnote adds that this superstition still prevails in England in regard to the hand of a man who has been hanged.

      The use of dead men's toes, fingers, spinal vertebræ, etc., in magical ceremonies, especially the fabrication of magical lamps and candles, is referred to by Frommann.167

      Grimm is authority for the statement that in both France and Germany the belief was prevalent that the fingers of an unborn babe were "available for magic."168

      In England witches were believed to "open graves for the purpose of taking out the joints of the fingers and toes of dead bodies … in order to prepare a powder for their magical purposes."169

      "Saint Athanase dit même, que ces parties du corps humain [i.e., hands, feet, toes, fingers, etc.] étoient adorées comme des dieux particuliers."170

      According to the sacred lore of the Brahmans "the Tirtha sacred to the Gods lies at the root of the little finger, that sacred to the Rishis in the middle of the fingers, that sacred to Men at the tips of the fingers, that sacred to Agni (fire) in the middle of the hand."171

      In the Island of Ceylon "debauchees and desperate people often play away the ends of their fingers."172

      Hone shows that "every joint of each finger was appropriated to some saint."173

      NECKLACES OF HUMAN TEETH

      A number of examples are to be found of the employment of necklaces of human teeth. In my own experience I have never come across any specimens, and my belief is that among the Indians south of the СКАЧАТЬ