The nature, origin, and linkages of the rite of 
hookswinging: with special reference to North 
America. 
By W. C. MacLeod, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa., U. S. A. 
Summary. 
I. The Nature of the Rite. 
1. The Mandan Rite as an initiation with a death and resurrection ritual. 
2. The Oglala Rite as a Sacrifice of Captives of War. 
. The Kwakiutl Rite as an Anthropophagous Sacrifice of Prisoners of War. 
he Nootka Rite as a Commuted Death Penalty. 
5. The Hooking or Skewering Rite Without Swinging as a Mortuary Sacrifice: Scythian, 
Polynesian and American (and a Note on Finger Sacrifice). 
6. Some Exoteric Aspects of Old and New World Hookswinging. 
7. The Pole Climb in the Great Lakes Area of North America (with a Note on the 
Fire Walk, Incensing, Prayer Sticks, and Altar Painting). 
II. Its Origin. 
8. The Point of Introduction of the Rite on the Northwest Coast of North America. 
9. The Plains Source of the Northwest Coast Rite. 
Ю. The Plains Rite Formerly Confined to the Upper Mississippi. 
Historical Linkages of the Northwest Coast and the Upper Mississippi. 
13 'll 16 ^ entral A mer i c an Origin of the North and South American Rite. 
ie Rite * n Lidia and in North America Parallel in Development: and the Possibility 
of Diffusion. 
suy o the problem of hookswinging in the Old World and the New 
as appeare o me to furnish one of the best points of attack on the problem 
°t m° n iu-° . nor thwest coast North American culture to the culture 
0 e n °^ r en j , lssls ^jPPi Valley; (2) of northwest coast North American 
culture ultima e y to Central American culture; and (3) of the culture of 
en ra merica o la o India. There appear to have been none of the traits 
we dea wi i presen in negroid Africa, so we are dealing with elements of 
culture w ose is ri u ion is limited in a fashion similar to that of, for example, 
cotton cultivation (originally limited to India in the Old World), the use of 
zero or place value for numerals (also originally limited to India), and many 
other traits 1 . 
The problem deals with an amazingly unique and complex insitutional 
parallel, as between, particularly, India and northern North America, for 
1 My point of view as to zero and cotton, I have expressed in my note: Southeast 
Asiatic origins. (Since then I have come to place an higher value on the Graebnerian 
method.) 
Anthropos XXIX. 1934. 1