Folkways. William Graham Sumner

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СКАЧАТЬ The Shingu Indians fished with bow and arrow, nets, scoop baskets, and weirs. Bait was used to make the fish rise. Then they were shot with an arrow. The people had no hooks, but eagerly adopted them when they became acquainted with them.182 They and other Brazilians set a long cylindrical basket in a stream in such a way that when the fish enters it and seizes the bait, it tilts up into a perpendicular position. The fish cannot then get out.183

124. Methods of fishing. Nilsson remarks on the astonishing resemblance between all the fishing apparatus of Scandinavians, Eskimo, and North Americans.184 The problem is solved in the same way, but the materials within reach impose limiting conditions. The rod and hook yield to the net when the fish are plentiful. Then, however, the spear also is used. It is sometimes made so that the head will come off when the fish is struck. By its buoyancy the spearhead, sticking in the body of the fish, compels it to rise, when it is caught.185 A peculiar device is reported from Dobu, New Guinea. A string long enough to reach to the ground is fastened to a kite. At the end of the string is a tassel of spider's web. The kite is held at such a height that the tassel just skims the water. The fish catching at it entangles its teeth in the spider's-web tassel and is caught.186 The Chinese have trained cormorants to do their fishing for them.

      

125. The mystic element. Although the food quest is the most utilitarian and matter-of-fact branch of the struggle for existence, the mystic element does not fail to present itself. No doubt it would be found interwoven with many of the cases mentioned above, if the question was raised and the investigation made. In the Caroline archipelago fishing is combined with various rites and religious notions. The chief medicine man owes the authority of his position, not to his knowledge of the art of fishing, but to his knowledge of the formulæ of incantation and exorcism employed in fishing. There must be abstinence from the sex relation before a fishing expedition. The men start in silence. Especially, the hoped-for success must not be mentioned. The boat must have a formula of luck pronounced over it. Sacrifices of taro are offered to win the favor of the god, lest the lines be broken by sharks or become entangled in rocks. If the expedition fails to get a good catch, the fault is laid to the men. Some one of them is thought to have done something amiss.187

126. Religion and industry. Here we meet with a familiar cycle of notions and usages. We must assume them in all cases, whether they are reported or not, for the element of supernatural intervention, or magic, seems never to be wanting. At higher stages it gives way to religious ritual or to priestly blessing. The Japanese sword maker formerly wore a priestly garb when making a sword, which was a sacred craft. He also practiced a purificatory ritual. The sacred rope of rice straw, the oldest symbol of Shinto, was suspended before the smithy. The workman's food was all cooked with holy fire, and none of his family might enter the workshop or speak to him while he was at work.188 There were also ascetic practices in the Shinto religion, which an elected representative of the community undertook each year for the prosperity of the whole.189 There is never a case of authority in human society which does not go back, for its origin and explanation, to the influence of the other world (ghosts, etc.) over this world.

127. Artifacts and freaks of nature. In the Oxford University museum may be seen a case full of natural stones, flints, etc., so like the artifacts of the Chellean type that it would require a skilled observer to determine whether they are artificial or not. The collection includes apparent celts, rings, perforated stones, borers, scrapers, and flint flakes, so that the objects are by no means such as would lie at the beginning of the series of artifacts, in regard to which the doubt whether they were artificial would arise from their rudeness and consequent resemblance to stones broken by natural conjunctures. In the museum at Dresden may be seen a collection of stones, natural products, which might serve as models for artificial axes, celts, etc. One object shows the possibility of freaks of nature of this class. It is a water-worn stone which might be taken for a skull. In the Copenhagen museum is a great collection of stone tools arranged in sequence of perfection, beginning with the coarsest and rudest and advancing to the highest products of art of this kind. That collection is arranged solely with reference to the development of the flint and stone implements as tools for a certain use. The sequence is very convincing as to the interpretation put on the objects, and also as to the strain towards improvement. Time and place are disregarded in the arrangement. The earliest specimens in the series are very rude, and only expert opinion could justify their place amongst artifacts. It reminds us of what we are told about specimens of Australian "tomahawks." It is said of such a weapon from West Australia that if it was "found anywhere divested of the gum and handle, it is doubtful whether it could be recognized by any one as a work of art. It is ruder in its fashioning, owing principally to the material of which it is composed, than even the rude, unrubbed, chipped cutting-stones of the Tasmanians."190 With regard to these stone implements of the Tasmanians Tylor said that some of them are "ruder in make than those of the mammoth period, inasmuch as their edges are formed by chipping only one surface of the stone, instead of both, as in the European examples." The Tasmanians, when they needed a cutting implement, caught up a suitable flat stone, knocked off chips from one side, partly or all around the edge, and used it without more ado. This they did under the eyes of modern Europeans. Tylor showed, "from among flint instruments and flakes from the cave of le Moustier in Dordogne, specimens corresponding in make with such curious exactness to those of the Tasmanians that, were they not chipped from different stones, it would hardly be possible to distinguish those of recent savages from those of European cavemen. It is not strange that experienced archæologists should have been at first inclined to consider a large portion of the Tasmanian stone implements exhibited as wasters and flakes, or chips, struck off in shaping implements." These stones had no handle. They were grasped in the hand.191 In the Oxford museum may be seen side by side flint shapes from St. Acheul, Tasmania, India, and the Cape of Good Hope: All the paleolithic implements which we possess, even the oldest and rudest, belong far on in a series of which the antecedent members are wanting, for the art, if recognized, is seen to be advanced and artistic.192 The Seri of southern California use a natural cobblestone, which is shaped only by the wear of use, and is discarded when sharp edges are produced by use or fracture. They use their teeth and claws like beasts. They have not a knife-sense and need training before they can use a knife. The stone selected is of an ovoid form somewhat flattened. By use it is battered on the ends and ground on the sides so that it becomes personal property and acquires fetishistic import. It is buried with the corpse of the woman who owned and used it.193 Holmes, after experimenting with the manufacture of stone implements, declared that "every implement resembling the final forms and every blade-shaped projectile point made from a bowlder, or similar bit of rock, not already approximate in shape, must pass through the same or very nearly the same, stages of development, leaving the same wasters, whether shaped to-day, yesterday, or a million years ago; whether in the hands of the civilized, the barbarous, or the savage man."194 This conclusion is very important, for it recognizes a certain constant determination of the art of stone-implement making by the qualities of the material and the muscular activities of man. It has been disputed whether the form called "turtle-backs" were one form in the series of artifacts, or a misform produced by errors in manufacture. "The American archæologists, who have labored long to repeat the processes of the aborigines in stone work, find themselves unavoidably making 'turtle-backs,' СКАЧАТЬ