Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1944, Page 321

A FINNISH SOCIOLOGIST
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he was avoided the onesidedness into which an investigator
is liable to fall who studies one specific tribe on one single oc-
casion.
Moreover, Karsten has pursued his South American researches
in accordance with a definite plan.5 In the region in question,
he declares, three large cultural provinces can be distinguished,
which in many respects have their own special character: (1)
a Chaco culture, to which Karsten refers also the natives of
Terra del Fuego, (2) a jungle culture, and (3) a mountain cul-
ture (primarily Inca). On his travels Karsten sought to acquaint
himself with all three. In addition to separate monographs deal-
ing with individual tribes — such as his The Indian Tribes of
Gran Chaco (1932) and The Head-Hunters of Western Amazonas
(1935), the latter, describing in detail the spiritual and material
culture of the Jibaro Indians, being according to Brock-Utne a
work of the greatest importance for cultural research — Karsten
has published a comparative study of South American sociology
under the title The Civilization of the South American Indians
(1916), with a highly personal polemic foreword to Edward
Westerk’s “Introductory Note.” In this work Karsten deals
at length with the connection between South American civili-
zation and magic and animism. Karsten finds traces of magic
in art, primitive dances and the couvade (the curious primitive
custom according to which after the birth of a child, while the
mother returns almost immediately to her daily tasks, the father
lies down on the natal bed), sacrifices, Indian initiation
ceremonies, wedding rites, the art of warfare.7
Actually, Karsten has devoted more study to primitive war-
fare than most of the older sociologists. K. Th. Preuss calls Kar-
sten’s account of war and victory celebrations among the Jibaro
Indians the most careful and completest description of the war
customs of a primitive people ever published.8 The primitive
peoples are by no means constantly at a stage of hostilities with
each other. Karsten has demonstrated that primitive war usually
arises out of a vendetta and not infrequently is carried on rather
with magic and invisible weapons than with those of a physical
character; that in war, women and children and old people are
spared and neutrals respected. And Karsten shows that even be-
tween the North American Indians war was often considerably
less sanguinary than was earlier believed, that it was confined
to small groups and often terminated when the braves returned
Le Nord, 1944, 3-4 19