the breaking of a taboo is commonly regarded as the vengeance of an outraged spirit or deity, who visits with sickness, disease, or death the guilty individual. Here the idea is chiefly or wholly of the animistic sort. But at an earlier period the notion has a magical content; the tabooed individual or object is possessed of a certain mystic awfulness or sanctity, is pervaded with a dangerous contaminating influence, is charged with a deadly electricity which may be automatically set free by physical contact. Hence arises the necessity of removing such dangerous persons or things to a safe distance or of subjecting them to a rigid quarantine. The entire community is interested in such proceedings; if the mystic contagion spreads all are liable to "catch it" and to suffer accordingly.

Ideas of this nature, either magical or animistic underlie the numerous taboos which pervade savage society. Here we are concerned only with those the effect of which is to strengthen the ties of property in a primitive community. I discuss the subject under its two natural divisions-the taboos that guard communal property, and those that confirm the rising conceptions of individual ownership..

It is commonplace to remark that among the lowest races most economic goods belong to the community as a whole. The individual has only a right of user which has not as yet passed into a recognized right of ownership. Thus hunting grounds and fishing streams are communally possessed. The same is often true of habitations, domestic utensils, and weapons. Frequently objects much employed for religious or magical purposes such as sacred stones, feathers, and beads, are looked upon as communal property. Conceptions such as these appear to have been reinforced by the existence of various taboos relating to the food-quest, the most important single subject in the primitive economy. The majority of them affect individuals alone, or the members of a totem group who may be restricted from killing and eating the tutelary animal of their clan.1 But in addition

1 For an examination of the economic aspect of some of these totemic food taboos see a suggestive article by A. E. Jenks, "Faith as a Factor in the Economic Life of the Amerind,” Amer. Anthropologist, n. s. (1900), II, 676–89.

there are taboos resting on all the members of a savage community, the effect of which is to provide a closed season for the animals and plants thus banned. Such communal prohibitions are usually removed by solemn ceremonies of first-fruits. The ethnographical evidence for these taboos is extensive and some of it may be set forth in detail.

Among the Central Australians studied by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen the Intichiuma ceremonies hold a most important place. These are performances by men of the different totemic clans for the purpose of magically increasing the food supply. Each totemic unit, a kangaroo group or a witchetty grub group, is believed to have immediate control over the numbers of the animal or plant the name of which it bears. Each group, therefore, as established by this primitive division of labor, is bound to contribute to the general stock of food by working magic for the propagation of its totem. After the magical performances called Intichiuma are over the witchetty grub or the kangaroo is tabooed to the members of the totem concerned. On no account may it be eaten until it is abundant and fully grown. Any infringement of this rule is thought to nullify the result of the magic and so to reduce the available supply of food. When the plant or animal becomes plentiful the taboo is lifted by the local headman: the members of the totem group may now eat sparingly of their totem, while the members of other totems may eat it without restriction.2

Outside of Australia we meet similar taboos which secure a much-needed closed season for plant and animal life. In the Mekeo District of British New Guinea there is a special officer whose function it is to place an afu or taboo on areca nuts and cocoanuts when the supply on the trees is running short. The prohibition has been known to endure as long as thirty-two weeks. Throughout the New Hebrides group "the cocoanuts are laid under a tapu till all the other crops are planted, or till some feast is celebrated; and death is the penalty of eating the

1 Spencer and Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1897), pp. 202 ff.

A. C. Haddon, Head-Hunters (London, 1901), pp. 270 ff.

forbidden fruit."4 In the Marquesas Islands when devil fish were getting scarce on the reef or when the cocoa-palms were being impoverished by the plucking of the green nuts, it was the chief's business to set a tapu on these articles of food until exhausted nature had been given a chance to revive and once more replenish the earth."

Among the tribes of Assam, on the northeastern border of India, an elaborate genna or taboo system has been recently described. Here we find a series of communal ordinances observed by the inhabitants of each village. Those which are of regular occurrence for the most part are connected with the crops. Before the seed is sown, the entire village is tabooed. The gates are closed; no one may come in or go out during a period which may last as long as ten days. From the conclusion of this initial genna to the commencement of the genna which ushers in the harvest time, all trade, all fishing and hunting, all cutting grass and felling trees is forbidden. "These taboos," writes Mr. Hodson, "are not intended, perhaps, to afford of set purpose a much-needed close time to the game, but they have that effect."

Africa, likewise yields confirmatory evidence. Thus the Ashanti first-fruits festival which continues a fortnight, comes in September when the new yams are ripe. People must not eat them before the conclusion of the ceremonies by which the taboo is raised. It has been observed that those "yam customs" have a double significance: they are a thanksgiving to the gods for having protected the crops and they are also a means of preventing any interference with the yams until the latter are quite ripe.7

From the New World many examples might be quoted to illustrate the use of communal prohibitions to preserve communal property. The Hopi of Arizona, who greatly prize eagle-feathers as decorations in their religious rites, regard these birds together with their nests as the common property of the clans. They 4 Inglis, in Journ. Ethnol. Soc. (1854), III, 62.

R. L. Stevenson, In the South Seas, Part I, chap. vi.
Journ. Anthrop. Inst. (1906), XXXVI, 94.

'Mary H. Kingsley, West African Studies, pp. 147, 148.

think it wrong to take all the young from the nest at any one time. It is "evidently due to this taboo," says Dr. Fewkes, "that the perpetuation of the species in Tusayan is effected."

Among the Seri Indians the pelican is the bird held most in consequence, for it forms one of the chief articles in the native dietary. The principal haunt and only known breeding-place is an island in the Gulf of California. Now the pelican, a fleshy, sluggish creature is almost defenseless when attacked on its sleepinggrounds. If hunted indiscriminately the bird would be the easiest source of a food supply. "Yet it survives in literal thousands to patrol the waters of all Seriland in far-stretching files and veers seldom out of sight in suitable weather." Dr. McGee explains the phenomenon by referring to religious ceremonies and taboos among the Seri, the result of which is to protect the fowl during the breeding season."

For our present purpose it is unnecessary to multiply illustrations. These communal taboos, whatever their origin, do have the practical result of preserving the animals and plants most important in the tribal economy. Through their operation, crops are allowed to mature, fruits to ripen, beasts of the forest and fish in the sea to increase and multiply. Prohibitions so eminently useful must have arisen very early in the social life of man. As such they place a restraint on individual selfishness for the benefit of the group as a whole. They have played a part, perhaps a noteworthy part, in deepening the sense of community obligation and in strengthening the concept of community property. Truly harvest-home and Thanksgiving have a remote but by no means dishonorable ancestry.

To turn now to the influence of superstition on private property. It is probable that we shall never be able even with the aid of the scientific imagination completely to retrace those early steps by which there arose the social recognition of an individual's right to own that which he had in actual possession.

Fewkes, "Property-Right in Eagles among the Hopi," Amer. Anthropologist, n. s. (1900), II, 702.

191.*

'Seventeenth Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol. (Washington, 1898), Part I,

The origins of property reach indeed back to prehuman times.10 We may point out, first of all, that those objects which earliest became subject to private ownership such as weapons, tools, articles of ornament, and clothing, are commonly regarded by early man as integral parts of the owner's personality. They are him almost as much as his bodily members, his hair, his saliva, his footprints, all of which things the savage identifies with the individual and as such employs in many practices of sympathetic magic.11

Further proof of the more or less complete identification of personal property with the proprietor is seen in the fact that very frequently his right of ownership does not cease with death. His chattels are buried with him, or burned over his grave, or it may be simply abandoned and allowed to decay. Such customs often keep a primitive community sunk in constant poverty. Their commonest origin no doubt lies in the belief that the dead man in his other life has need of his earthly goods. Hence springs the funeral sacrifice, perhaps the most widespread religious rite that man has ever practiced. But taboo ideas, also, have helped to establish the habit. To many a savage nothing is more dangerous than the contagion of death. He will take the most elaborate precautions to protect himself from it. Thus arise the widespread rules which prohibit the living from making use of any objects which once belonged to the dead. As has been lately remarked of the Kafirs, "in their belief a man's personality haunts his possessions."12 The Amazulu are afraid to wear the clothing of a dead man. 18 Some South African tribes after a funeral burn the house occupied by the deceased, with its entire contents. Grain, utensils, arms, ornaments, charms, furniture, beds, and bedding are polluted, the stain cannot be cleansed; they must all be cast into the fire.14 Similar notions of uncleanness

10 Cf. R. Petrucci, Les origines naturelles de la propriété (Bruxelles, 1905). "Cf. Professor Veblen's suggestive article: "The Beginnings of Ownership," Amer. Journ. Sociology (1898), IV, 352-65.

12 Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir (London, 1904), p. 83.

13 Callaway, Religious System of the Amazulu, p. 13.

“Macdonald, in Journ. Anthrop. Inst, (1890), XIX, 276.