28 King, Folk-lore of the North American Indiatis. 



in battle. All among the Hurons who died by a violent 

 death were differently interred from other dead. Those 

 who were drowned or died of cold had the flesh torn off 

 their bones, the bones were thrown into a ditch, and were 

 not removed at the Feast of the Dead. Similarly, amongst 

 Greeks, Romans, and Hindus, to take no other instances, 

 we find different modes of burial for such deaths as were 

 caused by suicide, lightning, and drowning. Such deaths 

 are due to the wrath of higher powers. 



I dealt earlier in this paper with the practice of the 

 resuscitation of a dead chief by passing on his name to 

 a living man. Father Poncet (xl., 119), after giving an 

 account of the tortures he suffered at the hands of the 

 Iroquois, relates that he was given to an old woman in 

 place of a brother of hers, who had been captured or 

 killed by those on the French side. Upon his entering 

 her cabin, she and her daughters began to sing the song 

 of the dead. " The renewal of mourning for the dead," he 

 says, " caused the departed to become alive in my person." 

 Of other tribes in the north-west it is said that the 

 medicine men pretend to receive the spirit of the dead in 

 their hands, and can transfer it to anyone who takes the 

 name of the dead in addition to his own (xvii., 243"). Just 

 now we saw that a Huron chief believed that the reason the 

 living resembled the dead was that souls of a certain kind 

 were born again. In the Niger Delta no one's soul dallies 

 below long. The soul's return to its own family is insured 

 by special ju-jus (charms). As the new babies arrive, 

 they are shown a selection of small articles belonging to 

 deceased members of the family. The child is identified 

 by the article which first attracts its attention. " Why, 

 he's Uncle John, see ! he knows his own pipe," &c.* In the 

 case of children, precautions are taken to render re-birth 



* Miss Kingslcy, Travels in West Africa, p. 493. 



