FIG. 52.—Native of the Department of Haute-Garonne
whose head has undergone the deformation called “Toulousaine.”
(Phot. Delisle; engraving belonging to the Paris Anthro. Society.)
Adornment with Objects attached to the Body.—The perforation of the ear, the nose, and the lips is made with the view of placing in the hole an ornament of some kind or other. Thus this species of mutilation may be considered as a natural step towards the second manner of adornment, which consists in placing or suspending gauds on the body. When people have few garments or none at all they are compelled to hook these objects to the body itself. The Botocudo perforates the lobes of the ears and the lower lip to insert into them heavy wooden plugs; other Indians of South America perforate the cheeks to stick feathers therein; the Papuans and the Australians the nasal septum, that it may hold a bone or stick (Figs. [53] and [149]); the Caribs and the Negroes of the Ubangi the lower lip, for the insertion of crystal, bone, or metal rods, or simply pins. Similar customs persist, moreover, among peoples more amply clothed. The nose-rings among the Dravidians or among Tatar women; the ear-pendants of the American Indians (Figs. [158], [159], [160], and [161]); the bone plugs placed in the cheeks among the Eskimo; the metal plates or precious stones inlaid in the teeth among the Malays of Sumatra, exist to prove this point. And the ear-rings of our civilised European women are the last vestige of a savage form of adornment which requires the mutilation of an organ.
The hair also is used to attach ornaments: flowers, jewels, ribbons, chips, feathers (Figs. [47], [117], [154], [158], [159], and [frontispiece]). As to the arrangement of the hair, it depends a great deal on its nature. The Negroes, with their short and woolly hair, are enabled to have a complicated head-dress (Figs. [47] and [141]). Peoples with smooth hair are content to leave it floating behind (Americans, Fig. [160], Indonesians), or to gather it up into a chignon (Annamese, Coreans, Eskimo), in one or several plaits (Chinese), or in several rolls or bands, stuck together and disposed in various ways (Mongols, Japanese, Fig. [120], Chinese). But it is among peoples with frizzy and slightly woolly hair that the head-dress attains a high degree of perfection. We have but to mention the capillary structures of the Bejas (Fig. [138]), the Fulbés (Fig. [139]), the Papuans and some Melanesians, whose mops of hair with a six-toothed comb coquettishly planted at the top are so characteristic (Figs. [152] and [153]).
FIG. 53.—Dancing costume of natives of Murray Islands (Torres Straits).
Type of Papuan (in the centre), Melanesian (on the right), and mixed race (on the left).
(Phot. Haddon.)
The custom of shaving the hair of the head and the beard, as well as the habit of plucking out the hairs, are more general among peoples whose pilous system is little developed than among hairy peoples. All the Mongolians, all the Indians of America, and almost all the Oceanians shave or pluck out the hair. Amongst them the razor, sometimes a fragment of obsidian or glass, is used in conjunction with depilatory tweezers. The wearing of the beard or long hair is often a matter of fashion or social convention. From the time of the patriarchs the beard has been honoured in the East, while in the West the fluctuations of fashion or opinion have made of its presence or absence a sign of opposition (Protestant clergy before the eighteenth century in Germany, Republicans of the middle of this century in France), or a distinctive mark of certain classes (Catholic clergy, servants, actors, soldiers in many states). Several superstitious ideas are connected with human hair. From at least the ninth century to the end of the Middle Ages, the Slavs and the Germans shaved the crown of their children’s heads, believing that it facilitated teething.
It would take too long to enumerate all the peoples among whom the cutting of the hair is a stigma of slavery or degradation; certain peoples cut their hair as a sign of mourning (Dakota Indians, etc.), others, on the contrary, let it grow very long for the same reason. On the other hand, the habit of letting the nails grow to a length of several centimetres, so general among the wealthy classes in Indo-China and Malaysia, is inspired chiefly by vanity; the object being to show that they have no need to resort to manual labour in order to live.
The Girdle, Necklace, and Garland.—Ornaments fixed to the body without mutilating it (the second stage in the evolution of ornament) are very varied. Originally strips of hide, sinews of animals, or herbaceous twigs, sometimes plaited, were fastened around the head or parts of the body where there was a depressed surface, above a bony projection or a muscular protuberance—the neck, the waist, the wrists, the ankles, as is still seen among the Fuegians (Fig. [174]), Melanesians, Bushmen, and Australians. According to the parts of the body thus adorned, four classes of ornaments may be recognised: garlands, collars, belts (Fig. [47]), and bracelets (on the arms and legs). To these simple bands men began at first to attach all sorts of secondary ornaments: bright shells (frontispiece and Figs. [53] and [151]), seeds and gay-coloured insects, beads of bone and shell-fish (Figs. [151], [159], and [160]), claws of wild beasts, teeth and knuckle bones of animals and human beings (Figs. [158] and [159]), bristles and hoofs of the Suidæ, pieces of fur, feathers of birds, leaves and flowers. And it is to these superadded ornaments that we may trace the origin of the garment proper. The thong of the head, over and above its utilitarian purpose as a quiver (the Bushmen push their arrows into it), becomes transformed into the crown of feathers so well known among the American Indians and Melanesians (Fig. [53]), into a wreath of flowers among the Polynesians, into all kinds of head-covering among other tribes (Figs. [22], [40], [107], [108], [109], [115], [134], [145], etc.).