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Show ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT XXIII ration- spreading from one unfriendly tribe to another. 1 The Apache and Papago tribes have been bitterly inimical from time immemorial, the oldest creation legends of the Papago describing the separation of the peoples in the beginning; yet there is hardly a custom among the latter which has not been shaped partially or completely by the inimical tribe. The habitat of the Papago in the hard desert is that to which they have been forced by the predatory Apache; the industries of the Papago are shaped by the conditions of the habitat and by the perpetual anticipation of attack. The traditions recounted by the old men are chiefly of battle against the Apache; even the ceremonies and beliefs are connected with that eternal vigilance which they have found the price of safety, and with the wiles and devices of the ever- present enemy. Perhaps the most important element in the acculturation is that connected with belief; for to the primitive mind the efficiency of a weapon is not mechanical but mystical ( an expression of superphysical potency), and each enemy strives constantly to coax or suborn the beast- gods and potencies of the other; so the Papago warrior went confidently to battle against the Apache when protected by a charm or fetish including an Apache arrowpoint taken in conflict, and felt assured of victory if his war club was made in imitation of that of the enemy and potentialized by a plume or inscription appealing to the Apache deity. Even later in the scale of development, after the piratical acculturation has become measurably amicable, this factor remains strong, as among the clans of the Kwakiutl and some other tribes in which the aim of marriage settlement is the acquisition, not of property or kindred per se, but of deities and traditions concerning them. The general law of piratical acculturation finds innumerable examples among the more primitive peoples of the world, and phases of it have been recognized in the proposition that conquering tribes take the language of the conquered. Other phases have been perceived, e. g., in the hypothesis of primitive umarriage by capture." Various earlier students have noted that actual or ceremonial capture of the bride is a part 1 A preliminary announcement of this work appears in the American Anthropologist, vol. xi, 1898, pp. 244- 249. |