THE TUSAYAN RITUAL: A STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT ON ABORIGINAL CULTS.
THE TUSAYAN RITUAL: A STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT ON ABORIGINAL CULTS.[1]
1. Saturday lecture in the Assembly Hall of the UnitedStates National Museum, May 16, 1896.
The science called ethnology claims as its field of research the studyof all racial characteristics of man. It deals not only with his physicalfeatures, social grouping, and geographical distribution, but alsowith the products of his hand and mind, his thoughts and feelings.No race or individual is so low in the scale of being as to be utterlydevoid of some idea of the supernatural, and as this is a universalhuman characteristic it is naturally one of the subjects which presentsitself for study by the ethnologist. The study of the evolution ofsupernatural ideas, like that of all other human characters, ought notto be limited to a few favored races, nor should the term “religion,” inits scientific use, be restricted to any group or race of man. It must bebroad enough to embrace the supernatural conceptions of all men, lowand high in the scale. No poor or insignificant grouping of men andwomen should be regarded too wretched to be studied, and the scientificman can not overlook any if he is loyal to scientific methods. Ageneralization which is built on limited knowledge of the religiouscharacteristics of a few men or those of gifted races will as surelyfail as a general law of linguistics based on the language of any oneof the great races to the neglect of others. There was a time whennaturalists overlooked the lowest animals in their studies of the evolutionof organic life, but now it is universally recognized by biologiststhat we must look to the most inferior animals for a solution of manyproblems connected with the highest. In studies of the developmentof the supernatural in the mind of man the same thing is true. Thelaws of the evolution of religious thought can not be scientificallystudied if the culture of primitive man is neglected. Unless I amgreatly mistaken, the roots of some of the purest spiritual conceptionsreach far down into savage and barbarous stages of culture.
We are accustomed to designate the crude supernatural ideas ofsavage and barbarous peoples as cults, and every cult will be foundon examination to be composed of two complemental parts, known as684mythology and ritual. Around the former group themselves the variousbeliefs regarding