Record of American Folk-Lore. 59
Later on, however, psychological motives prevail. The savage eats his enemy, or some part of him, to gain his prowess, or to assimilate to himself his soul or souls. The dead are eaten in order that their spirits may not wander about to the disadvantage of the living. The psychological motive also is at the basis of the eating of one's own fellow-tribesman or relative, the drinking of their pulverized bones, and many other like customs, which, as Mr. Koch points out, are often very closely connected with the food-regulations before and after birth. Dr. Koch also emphasizes the ceremonial-element in canni- balism. The article is a most valuable contribution to the limited scientific literature of the subject.
-■■ Medicine. In the " Medical Magazine," London (vol. viii. N. S. pp. 79, 346), G. Sharp treats of " The Civilization and Medicine of the less advanced American Indian Races."
Music. A valuable paper on " The Harmonic Structure of Indian Music," prepared by the late Prof. J. C. Fillmore for the Boston meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, appears in the "American Anthropologist " (vol. i. N. S. pp. 297-318) for April, 1899, having been edited by Miss Alice C. Fletcher. The author gives the musical notation of several Navaho, Kwakiutl, Yaqui, Tigna, Omaha, Fiji, Dahomey, and Arab songs. Professor Fill- more's general conclusion is of great interest (p. 318) : "In short, there is only one kind of music in the world, but there are vast dif- ferences between the stages of development represented by the sav- age and by the modern musician ; and there are also ethnological differences resulting from the physical and mental peculiarities of the races ; yet, essentially and fundamentally, music is precisely the same phenomenon for the savage as it is for the most advanced representative of modern culture." The author's extended investi- gations in primitive music enable him to declare : " I have yet to find a single song of our aboriginal peoples which is not as plainly diatonic and harmonic as our own." Between these aboriginal musi- cal compositions, the children's play-songs ("This is the way we wash our clothes "), and the old hymn-tunes ("When I can read my title clear "), the differences are " merely of an ethnological charac- ter, that is, they are differences of style and manner, not differences in essential structure." It is evident, according to Professor Fill- more, that "the forms assumed by primitive songs are determined (unconsciously to those who make them) by a latent sense of har- mony," and that the " question of the scale on which any given song is built is a wholly subordinate matter, and really resolves itself into the auestion of what is the natural harmony implied or embodied in the song." — In "Globus" (Braunschweig), vol. lxxv. (1899), pp. 14-16, Dr. Richard Andree writes of " Alte Trommeln indianischer Medizinmanner."
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