Primitive Love and Love-Stories eBook

Henry Theophilus Finck
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,176 pages of information about Primitive Love and Love-Stories.

Primitive Love and Love-Stories eBook

Henry Theophilus Finck
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,176 pages of information about Primitive Love and Love-Stories.

Australian women of the Port Lincoln tribes paint a ring around each eye and a streak over the stomach, and men mark their breasts with stripes and paints in different patterns.  An ignorant observer, or an advocate of the sexual selection theory, would infer that these “decorations” are resorted to for the purpose of ornamentation, to please individuals of the opposite sex.  But Wilhelmi, who understood the customs of these tribes, explains that these divers stripes and paints have a practical object, being used to “indicate the different degrees of relationship between a dead person and the mourners."[81] In South Australia widows in mourning “shave their heads, cover them with a netting, and plaster them with pipe-clay"[82].  A white band around the brow is also used as a badge of mourning[83].  Taplin says that the Narrinyeri adorn the bodies of the dead with bright-red ochre, and that this is a wide-spread custom in Australia.  A Dyeri, on being asked why he painted red and white spots on his skin, answered:  “Suppose me no make-im, me tumble down too; that one [the corpse] growl along-a-me.”  A further “ornament” of the women on these occasions consists in two white streaks on the arm to indicate that they have eaten some of the fat of the dead, according to their custom. (Smyth, I., 120.) In some districts the mourners paint themselves white on the death of a blood relation, and black when a relative by marriage dies.  The corpse is often painted red.  Red is used too when boys are initiated into manhood, and with most tribes it is also the war-color.  Hence it is not strange that they should undertake long journeys to secure fresh supplies of ochre:  for war, mourning, and superstition are three of the strongest motives of savage activity.  African Bushmen anoint the heads of the dead with a red powder mixed with melted fat.  Hottentots, when mourning, shave their heads in furrows.  Damaras wear a dark-colored skin-cap:  a piece of leather round the neck, to which is attached a piece of ostrich egg-shell.  Coast negroes bury the head of a family in his best clothes and ornaments, and Dahomans do the same[84].  Schweinfurth says that “according to the custom, which seems to belong to all Africa, as a sign of grief the Dinka wear a cord round the neck."[85] Mourning New Zealanders tie a red cloth round the head or wear headdresses of dark feathers.  New Caledonians cut off their hair and blacken and oil their faces[85].  Hawaiians cut their hair in various forms, knock out a front tooth, cut the ears and tattoo a spot on the tongue[86].  The Mineopies use three coloring substances for painting their bodies; and by the way they apply them they let it be known whether a person is ill or in mourning, or going to a festival.[87] In California the Yokaia widows make an unguent with which they smear a white band two inches wide all around the edge of the hair[88].  Of the Yukon Indians of Alaska “some wore hoops of birch wood around the neck and waists, with various

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Primitive Love and Love-Stories from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.