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. For this God and 

 the series of good and evil spirits there is only an official, the sorcerer 

 of the tribe, whose role 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 



