Elisée Reclus (c) says: “In sign of mourning the Papuans daub themselves in white, yellow, or black, according to the tribes.”
D’Albertis (d) reports that the women of New Guinea paint themselves black all over on the death of a relation, but that there are degrees of mourning among the men, e. g., the son of the deceased paints his whole body black, but other less related mourners may only paint the face more or less black. In Vol. II, p. 9, a differentiation is shown, by which in one locality the women daubed themselves from head to foot with mud. The same author says, in the same volume, p. 378, that the skulls preserved in their houses are always colored red and their foreheads frequently marked with some rough design.
In Armenia, as told in The Devil Worshipers of Armenia, in Scottish Geog. Mag., viii, p. 592, widows dress in white.
In Notes in East Equatorial Africa, Bull. Soc. d’Anthrop. de Brux. (b), it is told that in the region mentioned the women rub flour over their bodies on the death or departure of the husband.
Sir G. Wilkinson (a) writes that the ancient Egyptians in their mourning ceremonies wore white fillets, and describes the same use of the color white in the funeral processions painted on the walls of Thebes.
Dr. S. Wells Williams (a) reports of the Chinese mourning colors that “the mourners are dressed entirely in white or wear a white fillet around the head. In the southern districts half-mourning is blue, usually exhibited in a pair of blue shoes and a blue silken cord woven in the queue, instead of a red one; in the northern provinces white is the only mourning color seen.”
Herr von Brandt, in the Ainos and Japanese, Journal of the Anthrop. Inst. G. B. and I. (e), tells that the coffins of the deceased Mikados were covered with red, that is, with cinnabar.
COLORS FOR WAR AND PEACE.
These colors, respecting the Algonquian Indians, are mentioned in 1763, as published in Margry, to the effect that red feathers on the pipe signify war, and that other colors [each of which may have a modifying or special significance] mean peace.