[286] Hardy, Travels, p. 291.
[287] Only the finer cording shown in plate XXXI is original, the coarser ropes having been added to facilitate handling.
[288] Publication No. 56, U. S. Hydrographic Office, Bureau of Navigation, 1880, plate XV, p. 136.
[289] The law of fable in its relation to primitive surgery is formulated in the Sixteenth Ann. Rep. Bur. Am. Eth., 1897, p. 22.
[290] Hardy (Travels, p. 298) describes the ceremonial wearing of the heads of deer with horns attached.
[291] Cf. Hardy, Travels, p. 290.
[292] A rope-twisting device of the sort commonly employed by southwestern Indians was found in use by Seri boys at Costa Rica in 1894, and was included in the Seri collection; but the indications were that the device was a mere toy used, like the horse-hair riatas made by its aid, only in youthful sports.
[293] In this writing the conclusion reached in an unpublished discussion of the beginning of clothing is assumed—i. e., that the primal apparel was purely protective, and that the habitual concealment of portions of the body incidental to its wearing gradually planted the pudency sense. The germ of clothing, without attendant pudency, is well illustrated in Karl von den Steinen’s observations and discussions of the Brazilian natives (Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens, Berlin, 1894, pp. 190-199). It is noteworthy that the Seri, more primitive as they are in so many respects than any other American aborigines known, are much farther advanced than the Brazilian natives in appareling and its effects on character. The similarities and the differences are alike interesting; yet in both cases the costumes reflect environmental conditions and needs with remarkable fidelity.
[294] The failure to discriminate natural objects from artificialized implements produced from such objects by wear of use is a noteworthy trait of primitive folk. It is conspicuous among the acorn Indians of California, who fail to apperceive the manufacture of their own mills and who conceive that their bowlder mortars and creek-pebble pestles, even when completely artificialized by a generation’s use, are merely found and appropriated; and a similar state of mind persists among the well-advanced Papago, who have no conception of making their well-finished mortars and pestles, or even the stone tomahawks occasionally surviving, but regard the implements as fruits of discovery or treasures-trove only.
[295] It should be noted that the terms used in the titles of the accompanying plates are not denotive, but merely descriptive.