Scatalogic Rites of All Nations: A dissertation upon the employment of excrementitious remedial agents in religion, therapeutics, divination, witchcraft, love-philters, etc., in all parts of the globeBourke, John Gregory
Religion
Scatalogic Rites of All Nations: A dissertation upon the employment of excrementitious remedial agents in religion, therapeutics, divination, witchcraft, love-philters, etc., in all parts of the globe
Bourke, John Gregory
Scatology
Surgeon Corbusier, U. S. Army, says of the Apache-Yumas of Arizona
Territory, that “the married women are distinguished by seven narrow
blue lines running from the lower lip down to the chin.... Tattooing is
practised by the women, rarely by the men.... A young woman, when anxious
to become a mother, tattooes the figure of a child on her forehead.”—(In
the “American Antiquarian,” November, 1886.)
The “sectarial marks” of the Hindus are possibly vestiges of a former
practice of tattooing. Coleman (“Mythology of the Hindus,” London, 1832,
p. 165) has a reference to them.
Squier, in his monograph upon “Manobosho,” in “American Historical
Review,” 1848, says that the Mandans have a myth in which occurs the name
of a god, “Tattooed Face.”
Alice Oatman stated distinctly that “she was tattooed by two of their
(Mojaves) physicians,” and “marked, not as they marked their women, but
as they marked their captives.” Be that as it may, the four lines on
her chin, as well as can be discerned from the indifferent woodcut, are
the same as can be seen upon the chins of Mojave women to-day.—(See
Stratton’s “Captivity of the Oatman Girls,” San Francisco, 1857, pp. 151,
152.)
Maltebrun says of the inhabitants of the Island of Formosa: “Their
skin is covered with indelible marks, representing trees, animals, and
flowers of grotesque forms.”—(“Universal Geography,” American edition,
Philadelphia, 1832, vol. ii. lib. 43, p. 79, article “China.”)
“The practice of marking the skin with the figures of animals, flowers,
or stars, which was in existence before the time of Mahomet, has still
left traces among the Bedouin women.”—(Idem, vol. i. lib. 30, p. 395.)
Speaking of the Persian ladies, the same authority says: “They stain
their bodies with the figures of trees, birds, and beasts, sun, moon, and
stars.”—(Idem, vol. i. lib. 33, p. 428, article “Persia.”)
In the “Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London,” vol. vi., it
is stated that the “Oraon boys (India) are marked when children on the
arms by a rather severe process of puncturation, which they consider it
manly to endure.”
“Mojave girls, after they marry, tattoo the chin with vertical blue
lines.”—(Palmer, quoted by H. H. Bancroft in “Native Races,” vol. i. p.
480.)
In the cannibal feast of the Tupis of the Amazon, Southey says, “The
chief of the clan scarified the arms of the Matador above the elbow, so
as to leave a permanent mark there; and this was the Star and Garter
of their ambition, the highest badge of honor. There were some who cut
gashes in their breast, arms, and thighs on these occasions, and rubbed
a black powder in, which left an indelible stain.”—(Quoted by Herbert
Spencer in “Descriptive Sociology.”)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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