Tipi

“ Fig. 832.—Paints-His-Face-Red, a Dakota, was killed in his tipi by the Pawnees. Cloud-Shield’s Winter Count, 1837-’38. The right to paint the face red was sometimes gained by providing the ceremonial requirements for a commemoration of the dead, which were very expensive. There are two facts depicted by the figure. The man and his tipi are surrounded by a ring of enemies, who are shooting him, and, touched by the upper part of the ring, is the bottom of another and more minute tipi, marked with the sign of a fatal shot. ”

“ Here the tipi and the camp-circle figure largely in material culture; innumerable ceremonies and religious practices (e.g. the “sun-dance”) occur and many societies and ceremonial organizations exist. The buffalo and later the horse have profoundly influenced the culture of this area, in which Athabaskan (Sarcee) , Kitunahan, Algonkian, Siouan, Shoshonian, Kiowan tribes have shared. In some respects the Plains culture is quite recent and the result of “giving and taking” among the various peoples concerned. ”

“ Red-Cloud’s Census, No. 101. This figure shows the mode of rolling up the skins forming the tipi for transportation. It is attached to four lodge poles, the ends of which trail on the ground and constitute the “travail” which was dragged by dogs. Horses are now used for this purpose, and canvas takes the place of skins.
Fig. 765.—Claiming sanctuary.
Fig. 765.—An enemy came into Lone-Horn’s lodge during the medicine feast and was not killed. The-Swan’s Winter Count, 1852-’53. The pipe is not in the man’s hand, and the head only is drawn with the pipe between it and the tipi. ”

“ The erstwhile substitute, a Mexican, is still living. The image keeper, like his four associates, must not look in a mirror, nor touch a skunk or jackrabbit. One who touches these animals cannot enter the tipi where the doll is housed until four days have elapsed. No dog is allowed in this tipi, nor is one permitted to jump over the keeper or his four associates, the g.uołg.uȧt`. [Pg 439]
There are ten or twelve minor images (tailyúkȧ) which strongly resemble the tai'me in function, as they are essentially war medicines. ”

“ For the most part, the people who play at business in this solemn manner, are a melancholy, faded tribe. There is a damp air of decay about them, and you get the impression that if you looked closely you would see the cobwebs hanging from their coat-elbows, or forming a fringe from their daggling dress. ”

“ You can say the housefly is limitlessly brave, and in saying it you describe the whole house-fly tribe; you can say the rabbit is limitlessly timid, and by the phrase you describe the whole rabbit tribe; you can say the spider and the tiger are limitlessly murderous, and by that phrase you describe the whole spider and tiger tribes; you can say the lamb is limitlessly innocent and sweet and gentle, and by that phrase you describe all the lambs. There is hardly a creature that you cannot definitely and satisfactorily describe by one single trait—except man. ”

“ Again, just as each tribe, almost, contains traditions which cannot be reconciled with a homogeneous origin, so marked differences of type and physique are everywhere traceable, not only as between different tribes, where they are in some cases most pronounced, but as between individuals in the same tribe. Of course within the tribe each village tends to form its own type, and after some experience of any tribe it is possible to locate with some accuracy the villages of persons met by the shape and appearance of their faces, but beyond this the physical types are different. ”

“ We have seen that with the lowest savages the people of each tribe admire their own characteristic qualities,—the shape of the head and face, the squareness of the cheek-bones, the prominence or depression of the nose, the colour of the skin, the length of the hair on the head, the absence of hair on the face and body, or the presence of a great beard, and so forth. ”

“ There is no tribe, perhaps, on the Continent, who dress more comfortably, and more gaudily, than the Blackfeet, unless it be the tribe of Crows. There is no great difference, however, in the costliness or elegance of their costumes; nor in the materials of which they are formed; though there is a distinctive mode in each tribe, of stitching or ornamenting with the porcupine quills, which constitute one of the principal ornaments to all their fine dresses; and which can be easily recognized, by any one a little familiar with their modes, as belonging to such or such a tribe. ”

“ In other words, the further we go back the clearer it becomes that a member of a tribe looks upon himself as being of the same genus as his totem and makes no distinction between his attitude towards the totem and his attitude towards his tribal companions. ”

“ That has been the custom among many heathen nations; perhaps among almost all of them, at some time or other. It is the custom now among the Red Indians in North America, where you will find one man in a tribe called ‘The Bull,’ another ‘The Panther,’ and another ‘The Serpent,’ and so on; showing that they would like to be, if they could, as strong as the bull, as cruel as the panther, as venomous as the serpent. ”

“ Secondly, the varieties of form in human races are by no means so considerable, in many points of view, as the instances of variation which are known to occur in different tribes of animals belonging to the same stock, there being scarcely one domesticated species which does not display much more considerable deviations from the typical character of the tribe. ”

“ The custom of shaving the head, and ornamenting it with the crest of deer’s hair, belongs to this tribe; and also to the Osages, the Pawnees, the Sacs, and Foxes, and Ioways, and to no other tribe that I know of; unless it be in some few instances, where individuals have introduced it into their tribes, merely by way of imitation.
With these tribes, the custom is one uniformly adhered to by every man in the nation; excepting some few instances along the frontier, where efforts are made to imitate white men, by allowing the hair to grow out. ”

“ The demotic characters of the Seri, like those of other peoples, may be classed as (1) esthetic, (2) industrial, (3) institutional, (4) linguistic, and (5) sophic; and in this order the essentially human attributes of the tribe (except the last named) may be described. It is a matter of deep regret that the data concerning the demotic characters of the tribe are too meager to afford more than a mere outline of their activities, and that their suggestive mythology must be passed over for the present. ”

“ The rich man may come to breeding a tribe of dwarfs to be his jockeys, and a tribe of giants to be his hall-porters. Grooms might be born bow-legged and tailors born cross-legged; perfumers might have long, large noses and a crouching attitude, like hounds of scent ”

“ There are analogies and similarities between the habits of all primitive peoples, and one accustomed to the study of the early races of Europe can form a general opinion of the habits and mode of living of a tribe merely from the inspection of an ancient weapon or two, a bracelet, and a potsherd. ”

“ The most primitive and unarmed class of the thistle tribe is well represented by the saw-wort of our copses, a true thistly plant in all its general appearance and habits, but absolutely devoid of thorns or prickles. ”

“ The process of picking out animal names in one tribe corresponding to class names in other tribes, is not so utterly unscientific as it may seem, for the tribes have either borrowed the names from each other, or have a common basis of language, and some forms of dialectical change are obvious. ”

“ The kitchen-clock is more convenient than sidereal time. We must use the popular category, as we do by the Linnaean classification, for convenience, and not as exact and final. Otherwise, we are presently confounded, when the best settled traits of one race are claimed by some new ethnologist as precisely characteristic of the rival tribe. ”

“ The men of this tribe are generally small of stature, with very coarse and repulsive features. The forehead is low and retreating, the observing faculties large, the intellectual ones scarcely developed; the ears large, and standing off from the face; the eyes looking towards the temples, keen, snake-like, and far apart; the cheek-bones prominent ”

“ Now, review of the Seri esthetic indicates that the decorative concepts and activities are in large measure inchoate and are practically confined to a single manifestation, i. e., the delineation of totemic symbols primarily denoting zoic tutelaries and incidentally connoting the blood-carriers of clans consecrated to these beast-gods; so that the esthetic motives and devices of the tribe are essentially zoosematic. ”

“ Two cock-lairds, who are good for nothing but hunting the deer and hewing down the clan Donnoquhy, or any other tribe on whom our father unkennels them and their followers, like a pack of hungry hounds;—men who drink all day and sleep all night in their plaids under the hall tables, or anywhere else, like gillies or trencherman. ”

“ When a tribe is divided into four or eight exogamous classes, the children are born into the class neither of their father nor of their mother, but always into another class, which is, however, determined for them without variation by the particular classes to which their parents belong. ”

“ In many of the countries proper and peculiar to the brown or straight-haired occupants, there are to be found, side by side with them, darker complexioned fellow-inhabitants; blackish and black tribes; tribes with crisp hair; tribes with woolly hair; and tribes with hair and hue of every intermediate variety. Furthermore, wherever the two varieties come in contact, the black and blackish tribes are the lower in civilization; generally inhabiting the more inaccessible parts of their respective countries, and, in the eyes of even cautious theorists, wearing the appearance of being aboriginal. ”

“ A typical example from one tribe when critically studied is found to differ widely from an equally representative example of another tribe, not only in speech, dress, methods of wearing the hair, ornaments, etc., but also in physique and in mental traits. ”

“ Since the tribes practised far more in-breeding than out-breeding, the tendency was toward forming not only verbal linguistic groups, but biological varieties; the weaker the tribe, the fewer the captures, the greater the isolation and harder the conditions—producing dolichocephaly, dwarfism and other retrogressive characteristics. ”

“ Type is, of course, its proper correlative, and may be used to express a species, of which the individual members are variants. In that case it would be convenient to call the species by the name of some well-known example, and to take that example as the type or standard to which the other specimens more or less nearly conform. Thus, applying this mode of classification to folk-tales, we may speak of the Peau d'Âne type, or the King Lear type. A number of types may be included together in a group ”

“ As all triangles agree in certain properties, though widely different in others, so all Indians are alike in certain characteristics, though differing, almost radically, each from every other: But, as the points of coincidence in triangles are those which determine the class, and the differences only indicate subspecies, so the similar characteristics in the Indian, are those which distinguish the species, and the variations of character are, at most, only tribal limits. ”

“ Whilst, on the other hand, the individual animal, there is good reason to think, was marked by all the qualities of the general race as a suffering and unoffending tribe in the animal creation. The asses on which princes rode were of a separate color, of a peculiar breed, and improved, like the English racer, by continual care. ”

“ The old order of the Trilobites, which has accompanied us from Primordial times, here fails us, and a few depauperated species alone remain, the sole survivors of their ancient race—small, unornamented, and feeble representatives of a once numerous and influential tribe. ”

“ Another tribe, when they would propitiate the good-will of the powers which influence the weather, appoint ten companies of young men and women, who, after dressing themselves in robes made of felt, and binding their loins with an embroidered girdle, dance and play the organ with every suitable demonstration of joy and festivity. ”

“ And now all this strength and beauty has departed, and the valley of Typee is the abode of some dozen wretched creatures, afflicted by leprosy, elephantiasis, and tuberculosis. Melville estimated the population at two thousand, not taking into consideration the small adjoining valley of Ho-o-u-mi. Life has rotted away in this wonderful garden spot, where the climate is as delightful and healthful as any to be found in the world. Not alone were the Typeans physically magnificent ”

“ When the sun shines, the appearance of this finny tribe is most beautiful, being similar to a spacious field of variegated gems.
They afford a sure subsistence to vast multitudes of birds, of whales, and other fish; and, to complete their destruction, man himself joins in the common chase. ”

“ A type is an example of any class, for instance, a species of a genus, which is considered as eminently possessing the characters of the class. All the species which have a greater affinity with this type-species than with any others, form the genus, and are ranged about it, deviating from it in various directions and different degrees.”—Whewell, The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. ”

“ The study of primitive peoples is extremely curious and full of surprises. It is twenty years since I undertook it among the Thonga and Pedi tribes of South Africa, and the further I advance, the more I am astonished at the great number, the complexity, and the profundity of the rites of these so-called savages. Only a superficial observer could accuse their individual or tribal life of superficiality. ”