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The Mincopies adore the sun as a beneficent deity, the moon as an inferior god. To the Natchez the sun is the supreme god; with some tribes of North America the chief god is heaven blowing, the sky with a wind in it, what Longfellow calls the "Great Spirit" or blowing. The Incas invoked together the Creator and the Sun and Thunder. Thunder was one of the great gods of the Germans.
The Indians of the northwest of Colorado, the Yapais of the Caroline Islands, and the Mincopies of the Andaman Isles, with many other races, know no other process. We must, however, still maintain a certain reserve in dealing with the fire-obtaining implements of so imperfect a nature, and belonging to times so remote as those called prehistoric.
The so-called "Drawidian" populations of Southern Hindostan lead us back, physically as well as geographically, towards the Australians; while the diminutive MINCOPIES of the Andaman Islands lie midway between the Negro and Negrito races, and, as Mr. Busk has pointed out, occasionally present the rare combination of Brachycephaly, or short-headedness, with woolly hair.
Caution is indicated. Does Mr. Max Muller, so strict about evidence, boggle at the stone house, the only son, the shrimp? Not he; he never hints at the shrimp! Does he point out that one anthropologist has asked for caution in weighing what the Mincopies told Mr. Man? Perhaps in Glasgow they do not read us anthropologists much. On p. 413 our author returns to the charge.
Fire arising from natural causes, such as conflagrations started by lightning, no doubt early taught man the advantage of this agency as a protection from cold, but the artificial production of fire was a process too intricate to be arrived at by undeveloped man except as a result of accident. It has never been achieved, as we have seen, by the Andaman Mincopies.
The moral side of the Mincopies seems to be highly developed; the modesty of the young girls is most strict; monogamy is the rule, and "Their list of forbidden degrees An extensive morality shows," since even the marriage of cousins-german is considered highly immoral. "Men and women," says Man, "are models of constancy."
Even after artificial methods of fire-making were invented, our savage ancestors were exceedingly careful to keep their fires alive, as the Mincopies are to-day, and this heedful attention left its traces until very recent times. So important was the apparatus for kindling a flame deemed that in India the fire-twirl was made a god and became one of the chief deities of that polytheistic land.
Their present restriction and partial extermination have been due to the incursions of the warlike Malays. The Andaman Mincopies remained undisturbed until a recent date, and added fishing to their hunting pursuits.
Amongst these, the Mincopies of the Andaman Islands offer a convenient starting-point. The knowledge which we possess of these little blacks is extensive, thanks to the labours in particular of Mr. The average stature of the males of this race is four feet six inches, the height of a boy of ten years of age.
In the preceding progress along the outskirts of the habitable world, eleven readily distinguishable stocks, or persistent modifications, of mankind, have been recognized. I have purposely omitted such people as the Abyssinians and the Hindoos, who there is every reason to believe result from the intermixture of distinct stocks. Perhaps I ought, for like reasons, to have ignored the Mincopies.
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