Rafael Karsten - The Civilization of the South Indian Americans

This book is an in depth look at the religious and superstitious beliefs, and practices based upon such beliefs, of the South American Indians. In this work, Rafael dispels many incorrect assumptions about various practices, such as self-decoration. He writing provides valuable information for those who work with this subject, yet the general public can also pick up this book and find it fascinating.

First published in 2005 by
Kegan Paul International

This edition first published in 2010 by
Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OXI4 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint ofthe Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Kegan Paul, 2005

Transferred to Digital Printing 2010

All rights reserved. No part ofthis book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 10: 0-7103-1168-0 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-7103-1168-9 (hbk)

Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. The publisher has made every effort to contact original copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

BY DR. EDWARD WESTERMARCK

H AVING read the proofs of Dr. Karsten's book, I am asked by the Editor to say a few words by way of introducing the work to English readers. This I have great pleasure in doing, although there is certainly no need for it. I think it will be generally admitted that Dr. Karsten's book is the most important contribution to the study of certain aspects of the South American native civilization which has yet appeared.

So far as the lower forms of civilization are concerned, there are, next to sociological field-work, no other investigations so urgently needed as monographs on definite classes of social phenomena among a certain group of related tribes. Social facts are largely influenced by local conditions, by the physical environment, by the circumstances in which the people in question live, by their habits and mental characteristics; and all these factors can, of course, much more easily be taken into account when the investigation is confined to a single people, or one ethnic unit, than when it embraces a class of phenomena as existing throughout thh whole uncivilized world. Dr. Karsten's book combines the merits of the field-ethnologist with those of the monographer on a larger scale. His equipment for his task is exceptional. He is a trained sociologist, and an acute and thoughtful observer. He went to South America for the express purpose of studying its native tribes. He has spent five years in close contact with savages in different parts of the continent, and learned their language. And he has carefully searched all the available literature relating to the customs and beliefs of Indians in the various parts of the vast area with which he is dealing, and has thus been able to present, and comment upon, a large mass of facts falling outside the field for his own direct inquiries and personal observation.

In the present work Dr. Karsten has mainly restricted himself to a discussion of the religious and superstitious beliefs of the Indians and of practices based upon such beliefs, and by doing so he has been in a position to discuss this particular subject with a thoroughness rarely met with in sociological monographs. Thus he has devoted some two hundred pages to customs relating to self-decorations, such as the painting of the face and the body, the cutting or shaving of the hair, the piercing of the lips and the ears for the insertion of rings or other objects, the adorning and covering of the body with skins of animals or feathers of birds, or with necklaces, bracelets, or other ornaments, the mutilation of the body, scarification, and tattooing. He has arrived at the conclusion that these and similar customs have not, in the first place, been practised from decorative or aesthetic motives, but have originated in religious or magical ideas still held by the natives.

In very many instances he has undoubtedly proved his case. I am glad to say that in these questions there is considerably more agreement between his opinions and my own than he himself seems to be aware of. In the fifth, rewritten edition of my History of Human Marriage, I have pointed out that those world-wide self-decorative practices may be traced to a variety of motives, including such of a superstitious nature. In one of the chapters on Primitive Means of Attraction I made the remark: My research work in Morocco has convinced me that in very many cases the belief in magic forces is at the bottom of customs which have never before been traced to such a cause; and I have little doubt that in the genesis of practices which we have now discussed, superstition has played a larger part than is known at present. But I have also said that I think it is an indisputable fact that savages, at present at least, practise ornamentation on a large scale as a sexual allurement ; that there is ample evidence that many savage mutilations, or practices connected with them, are nowadays looked upon as ornamental, whatever may have been their original object; that tattooing, when not restricted merely to one or a few marks with a specific meaning, is generally considered to improve the appearance of the person subject to it, and that we have reason to believe that in such cases it is practised with this object in view. It is quite possible that some of the statements on which these assertions are founded are merely conclusions of travellers who have possessed little insight into native psychologyunfortunately, we are only too often utterly unable to distinguish between a writer's own conjecture and the statement of a fact actually observed by himbut others are quotations from the writings of field-ethnologists belonging to a class whose exclusion from the rank of acceptable witnesses would almost mean the ruin of ethnology. I have protested against the indiscriminate dictum of Mr. Finckquoted by Dr. Karsten with complete approval so far as the South American Indians are concernedthat the remarks of travellers regarding the addiction of savages to personal ornamentation are simply the unwarranted assumptions of superficial observers, who, ignorant of the real reasons why the lower races paint, tattoo, and otherwise adorn themselves, recklessly inferred that they did it to make themselves beautiful. In Morocco, for example, although tattoo marks may be applied to make a man a good shot, or to cure a swollen knee, or to act as charms against the evil eye, more elaborate patterns, at least, are uniformly regarded as ornaments. A Berber from the interior, whom I always found to be a most reliable informant, told me (I may almost say, to my disappointment) that the large tattoo which he had on his right hand had been made when he was a boy in order to be pleasing to the women; and he added that many young men of his tribe have the right or left hand and the lower part of the forearm, as also one of their shoulders, tattooed for the same purpose, so as to find favour with the women without paying them anything. A beautifully tattooed girl is praised in their songs, and attracts many lovers who pay her well; and when given in marriage she fetches a high bride price. I refuse to admit that statements of this kind are merely the unwarranted assumptions of superficial observers.