WHOLE VOL. ARAUCANIAN CHILD LIFE — HILGER l6l 



on this frame or on a bier for a considerable time, even two, three, or 

 more months, until everything — coffin, chicha, food, gifts — could be 

 gotten ready for the burial ; visiting by relatives and friends who 

 brought gifts, including chicha, and who drank toasts to the dead 

 and placed gifts around the body ; making of chicha libations and lus- 

 trations ; washing the body and dressing it in new clothes. 



Of these conventions only a few exist today. In all areas inform- 

 ants remarked that the old customs regarding wakes and burials were 

 dying out; that what one saw today was a mixture of traditional 

 Araucanian customs and those of Chileans, except in families where 

 the wishes of old relatives were still respected and consequently old 

 customs were carried out. 



The following generalized account of both traditional and present- 

 day customs is based on statements made by my informants. 



A wake formerly lasted until all relatives had arrived, or until suffi- 

 cient food — tortillas, mutton, and mudai — had been provided to feed 

 all those who were expected. This usually took two or three nights 

 and the intervening days ; at times, much longer, even a month. Dur- 

 ing this time, the body rested on a ladderlike frame with food and 

 drink placed about the head, and the clothes and other personal be- 

 longings of the deceased placed about the body. Formerly, if the burial 

 did not take place within a few days, the body was fastened to the lad- 

 derlike frame and the frame either set up erect, resting in crotches of 

 two branches of trees that had been set in the floor of the ruka, or the 

 head end of the frame was fastened to rafters, and the frame thus 

 suspended. A body so suspended was called pilqai. Men, women, and 

 young children were so treated. A baby's corpse was tied to its 

 cradleboard and set up against the wall of the ruka, a custom which 

 still prevails. "I saw several bodies so suspended," said a 70-year-old 

 Panguipulli man. "The odor was terrible." To which a listener-in 

 added : "The stench was unbearable ! But the people put up with it ; 

 we had no way of embalming a body. No, the blood was not with- 

 drawn nor were herbs tied to the body. Do your people do that?" 

 The pilqai is no longer a custom. 



Today, in Conaripe area, a body, including head and feet, is wrapped 

 in a blanket or chamall and bound about with trariiwe, the woven ma- 

 terial used for belts. Old informants gave this as an old custom. 

 "Recently one of our schoolboys was so laid out," said a non- 

 Araucanian teacher. "The boy's hat rested on his face; bottles of 

 chicha, pans of fried chicken, stacks of tortillas, the boy's clothes, his 

 pencils, writing tablets, and schoolbooks lay near him — mostly about 

 his head. Not too long ago, I attended the wake of an old man. He, 



