578 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1911. 
counseling of an impetuous race, exceedingly jealous of their rights 
and of their liberty. ‘ 
Civil liberty—In this case, as in others, there is no written law; it 
is tradition which continues to have the force of law. In business 
transactions of all kinds there is no other guaranty than that of the 
pledged word of mouth. There is used, however, in the case of an 
employer, under certain circumstances, a stick cut with a series of 
notches and split through the notches from end to end like a tally 
stick. Each of the contracting parties takes one half of the stick; 
if a dispute arises, they place the two pieces together and the one 
disloyal is readily revealed. 
RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 
Religion.—The Lolo religion is based on a belief in spirits, beings 
immaterial, good and bad. He seldom thinks about the good spirits, 
even ignores them, but the evil spirits, on the contrary, to which 
misfortunes and maladies of all forms are attributed, become objects 
of solicitations, of formal supplications by the sorcerer priests; never 
by the interested party, for to be able to appease the evil spirits some 
sacrifices are very frequently offered, though there is no true cult, 
no real ritual. The prayer in the form known to us does not exist 
at all. The Lolo fully recognizes a sovereign God, omnipotent, Crea- 
tor of all things, but he has not thought of building a temple to Him, 
nor of worshiping Him under any image whatever. f[orthis God and 
the series of good and evil spirits there is only an official, the sorcerer 
of the tribe, whose réle is limited to the practice of certain rites and 
the rendering of oracles. The sorcerer priest is also a healer, so they 
think, especially when the illness is considered as due to the entrance 
of an evil spirit which can be driven out only under the irresistible 
action of certain rites. In serious cases, when the adjurations have 
no effect, a sacrifice is made, by the burnt offering of a domestic 
animal, to the recalcitrant spirit—a cow, a goat, a lamb, or a fowl. 
The kind of animal to be offered is determined by an examination of 
the cracks made by fire in the shoulder blade of a goat or sheep. 
If two fissures appear in the form of a cross, it is a good sign, the 
patient will be cured. If some fine cracks cut the arms of the cross, 
the result is doubtful, the spirit makes some restrictions, some further 
rites are required. It is then not a fowl that should be offered, but a 
cow. The sorcerer then repeats the process with lighted tinder. A 
new animal is sacrificed. The heart is offered to the sick one and must 
be eaten by him. The animal is not consumed on a brasier, as was 
done by the children of Israel, but it is eaten by the sick one’s family, 
which offers to God only the blood of the victim. 
In religious matters, the Lolo’s mind presents two characteristics 
in strange opposition. There is not only a primitive belief in the 
