1 8 King, Folk-lore of the NortJi American Indians. 



Her body was then dug up and carried round a cabin with 

 the pumpkin. No one was to look. Someone did look 

 and the soul escaped. 



The name of the dead was not to be mentioned, for 

 fear apparently that the dead should hear and be displeased. 

 With the Aruntas of Central Australia it is the near 

 relations who must not mention his name. With them, 

 indeed, widows must not speak at all for twelve months, 

 except on their fingers. In the case of one tribe in 

 Paraguay all have to change their names on the death of 

 a chief With an Australian tribe, on the lower Murray, if 

 the name of the dead was also the name of a bird or beast 

 the name of that bird or beast must be changed. With the 

 Indians there was a custom of passing on the name of the 

 famous dead. When the dead man's name had been given 

 to another and presents offered to his relatives, then the 

 body was said to have been " cached," or rather the dead 

 resuscitated. Presents were made to the man who thus 

 took the name of a dead chief and resuscitated him. The 

 man who thus took the name of the dead would give a 

 magnificent feast and then make a levy of the young men 

 and go on a warlike expedition to perform some exploit, 

 (x., 277.) As we shall see later on, this is a case of 

 metempsychosis. The soul of the dead chief passes on to 

 the successor, who takes his name, and in this way the 

 famous captains never die. This belief in the resuscitation 

 of the dead man's soul in his successor exists along with the 

 belief in the continued existence of the souls of the dead 

 in the Village of the Dead in the West. 



The funeral rites next demand our attention. Amongst 

 the Hurons the bodies are first put in tombs of bark raised 

 upon four stakes 8 or 10 feet high in the village cemetery. 

 The great mourning lasts for ten days ; the lesser mourn- 

 ing for a year. Speeches are made in honour of the dead. 



