head-hunters

• youth of h. cannot marry until possessed of a head

82:3.5Many early tribes re­quired feats of steal­ing as a qual­i­fi­ca­tion for mar­riage; later peo­ples sub­sti­tuted for such raid­ing for­ays, ath­letic con­tests and com­pet­i­tive games. The win­ners in these con­tests were awarded the first prize—choice of the sea­son’s brides. Among the head-hunters a youth might not marry un­til he pos­sessed at least one head, al­though such skulls were some­times pur­chasable. As the buy­ing of wives de­clined, they were won by rid­dle con­tests, a prac­tice that still sur­vives among many groups of the black man.

• captured enemies’ souls

86:5.15The soul was gen­er­ally thought of as be­ing iden­ti­fied with the breath, but it was also lo­cated by var­i­ous peo­ples in the head, hair, heart, liver, blood, and fat. The “cry­ing out of Abel’s blood from the ground” is ex­pres­sive of the one­time be­lief in the pres­ence of the ghost in the blood. The Semites taught that the soul resided in the bod­ily fat, and among many the eat­ing of an­i­mal fat was taboo. Head hunt­ing was a method of cap­tur­ing an en­emy’s soul, as was scalp­ing. In re­cent times the eyes have been re­garded as the win­dows of the soul.

• made slaves of murderers’ ghosts

87:2.8It was cus­tom­ary to dis­patch a large num­ber of sub­jects to ac­com­pany a dead chief; slaves were killed when their mas­ter died that they might serve him in ghost­land. The Borneans still pro­vide a courier com­pan­ion; a slave is speared to death to make the ghost jour­ney with his de­ceased mas­ter. Ghosts of mur­dered per­sons were be­lieved to be de­lighted to have the ghosts of their mur­der­ers as slaves; this no­tion mo­ti­vated men to head hunt­ing.

• head hunting accounted for by belief in skull fetishes

88:1.8Saliva was a po­tent fe­tish; dev­ils could be driven out by spit­ting on a per­son. For an el­der or su­pe­rior to spit on one was the high­est com­pli­ment. Parts of the hu­man body were looked upon as po­ten­tial fe­tishes, par­tic­u­larly the hair and nails. The long-grow­ing fin­ger­nails of the chiefs were highly prized, and the trim­mings thereof were a pow­er­ful fe­tish. Be­lief in skull fe­tishes ac­counts for much of later-day head-hunt­ing. The um­bil­i­cal cord was a highly prized fe­tish; even to­day it is so re­garded in Africa. Man­kind’s first toy was a pre­served um­bil­i­cal cord. Set with pearls, as was of­ten done, it was man’s first neck­lace.

• practiced skull worship, provided scapemen

89:0.1Prim­i­tive man re­garded him­self as be­ing in debt to the spir­its, as stand­ing in need of re­demp­tion. As the sav­ages looked at it, in jus­tice the spir­its might have vis­ited much more bad luck upon them. As time passed, this con­cept de­vel­oped into the doc­trine of sin and sal­va­tion. The soul was looked upon as com­ing into the world un­der for­feit—orig­i­nal sin. The soul must be ran­somed; a scape­goat must be pro­vided. The head-hunter, in ad­di­tion to prac­tic­ing the cult of skull wor­ship, was able to pro­vide a sub­sti­tute for his own life, a scape­man.

• allowed women to redeem lives by sexual surrender

89:7.4Many of the pe­cu­liar as­so­ci­a­tions of sex lax­ity with prim­i­tive wor­ship had their ori­gin in con­nec­tion with hu­man sac­ri­fice. In olden times, if a woman met head-hunters, she could re­deem her life by sex­ual sur­ren­der. Later, a maiden con­se­crated to the gods as a sac­ri­fice might elect to re­deem her life by ded­i­cat­ing her body for life to the sa­cred sex ser­vice of the tem­ple; in this way she could earn her re­demp­tion money. The an­cients re­garded it as highly el­e­vat­ing to have sex re­la­tions with a woman thus en­gaged in ran­som­ing her life. It was a re­li­gious cer­e­mony to con­sort with these sa­cred maid­ens, and in ad­di­tion, this whole rit­ual af­forded an ac­cept­able ex­cuse for com­mon­place sex­ual grat­i­fi­ca­tion. This was a sub­tle species of self-de­cep­tion which both the maid­ens and their con­sorts de­lighted to prac­tice upon them­selves. The mores al­ways drag be­hind in the evo­lu­tion­ary ad­vance of civ­i­liza­tion, thus pro­vid­ing sanc­tion for the ear­lier and more sav­age­like sex prac­tices of the evolv­ing races.