were worn around the neck,
less, perhaps, as ornaments than as charms."[75] The Ainos of Japan
and the Fijians held that tattooing was a custom introduced by the
gods. Fijian women believed "that to be tattooed is a passport to the
other world, where it prevents them from being persecuted by their own
sex."[76] An Australian custom ordained that every person must have
the septum of the nose pierced and must wear in it a piece of bone, a
reed, or the stalks of some grass. This was not done, however, with
the object of adorning the person, but for superstitious reasons: "the
old men used to predict to those who were averse to this mutilation
all kinds of evil." The sinner, they said, would suffer in the next
world by having to eat filth. "To avoid a punishment so horrible, each
one gladly submitted, and his or her nose was pierced accordingly."
(Brough Smyth, 274.) Wilhelmi says that in the Northwest the men place
in the head-band behind the ears pieces of wood decorated with very
thin shavings and looking like plumes of white feathers. They do this
"on occasions of rejoicings and when engaged in their mystic
ceremonies." Nicaraguans trace the custom of flattening the heads of
children to instructions from the gods, and Pelew Islanders believed
that to win eternal bliss the septum of the nose must be perforated,
while Eskimo girls were induced to submit to having long stitches made
with a needle and black thread on several parts of the face by the
superstitious fear that if they refused they would, after death, be
turned into train tubs and placed under the lamps in heaven.[77] In
order that the ghost of a Sioux Indian may travel the ghost road in
safety, it is necessary for each Dakota during his life to be tattooed
in the middle of the forehead or on the wrists. If found without
these, he is pushed from a cloud or cliff and falls back to this
world.[78] In Australia, the Kurnai medicine men were supposed to be
able to communicate with ghosts only when they had certain bones
thrust through the nose.[79] The _American Anthropologist_ contains
(July, 1889) a description of the various kinds of face-coloring to
indicate degrees in the Grand Medicine Society of the Ojibwa. These
Indians frequently tattooed temples, forehead, or cheeks of sufferers
from headache or toothache, in the belief that this would expel the
demons who cause the pain. In Congo, scarifications are made on the
back for therapeutic reasons; and in Timor-L