Dark races, like the Africans and Australians, do not practise
tattooing, because the marks would not show conspicuously on their
black skins. They therefore resort to the process of raising scars by
cutting the skin with flint or a shell and then rubbing in earth, or
the juice of certain plants, etc. The result is a permanent scar, and
these scars are arranged by the different tribes in different
patterns, on divers parts of the body. In Queensland the lines,
according to Lumholtz (177),
"always denote a certain order of rank, and here it depends
upon age. Boys under a certain age are not decorated; but in
time they receive a few cross-stripes upon their chests and
stomachs. The number of stripes is gradually increased, and
when the subjects have grown up, a half-moon-shaped line is
cut around each nipple."
The necessity for such distinctive marks on the body is particularly
great among the Australians, because they are subdivided in the most
complicated ways and have an elaborate code of sexual permissions and
prohibitions. Therefore, as Frazer suggests (38),
"a chief object of these initiation ceremonies was to teach
the youths with whom they might or might not have
connection, and to put them in possession of a visible
language, ... by means of which they might be able to
communicate their totems to, and to ascertain the totems of,
strangers whose language they did not understand."
In Africa, too, as we have seen, the scars are used as tribal names,
and for other practical purposes. Holub (7) found that the Koranna of
Central South Africa has three cuts on the chest. They confessed to
him that they indicated a kind of free-masonry, insuring their being
well received by Koranna everywhere. On the Congo, scarifications are
made on the back for therapeutic reasons, and on the face as tribal
marks. (Mallery, 417; H. Ward, 136.) Bechuana priests make long scars
on a warrior's thigh to indicate that he has slain an enemy in battle.
(Lichtenstein, II., 331.) According to d'Albertis the people of New
Guinea use some scars as a sign that they have travelled (I., 213).
And so on, _ad infinitum_.