They celebrate their origin
by a grand annual dance. One of them, naked as he was born, is buried in
the earth. The others, clothed in wolf-skins, walk over him, snuff
around him, howl in lupine style, and finally dig him up with their
nails. The leading wolf then solemnly places a bow and arrow in his
hands, and to his inquiry as to what he must do for a living, paternally
advises him "to do as the wolves do--rob, kill, and murder, rove from
place to place, and never cultivate the soil."[231-1] Most wise and
fatherly counsel! But what is there new under the sun? Three thousand
years ago the Hirpini, or Wolves, an ancient Sabine tribe, were wont to
collect on Mount Soracte, and there go through certain rites in memory
of an oracle which predicted their extinction when they ceased to gain
their living as wolves by violence and plunder. Therefore they dressed
in wolf-skins, ran with barks and howls over burning coals, and gnawed
wolfishly whatever they could seize.[231-2]
Though hasty writers have often said that the Indian tribes claim
literal descent from different wild beasts, probably in all other
instances, as in these, this will prove, on examination, to be an error
resting on a misapprehension arising from the habit of the natives of
adopting as their totem or clan-mark the figure and name of some animal,
or else, in an ignorance of the animate symbols employed with such
marked preference by the red race to express abstract ideas.
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