BOTH] THE BODY AND ITS ASSOCIATED SPIRITS 159 



than that of an every-day gift or ordinary ornament. The Island 

 Caribs certainly used the bones of their friends for purposes of witch- 

 craft and prophecy (Sect. 91). The practice of exhuming the remains 

 after longer or shorter intervals, although not direct evidence, may 

 nevertheless indicate the existence in foi'mer times of a similar use for 

 the bones among the Mainland Caribs and other tribes. Thus, at 

 the expiration of the year, the decomposed body is dug up and the 

 bones are distributed to all the friends and acquaintances (St, i, 399). 

 The bones, having been cleaned by the fi.sh, are packed according to 

 size in a basket already provided, worked with glass beads of various 

 colors; care is taken that the skull of the deceased forms the lid of 

 the basket. The basket is then hung up to the roof of their houses 

 (among the Warraus of the Orinoco) along wath the many other 

 baskets containing the bones of their forefathers (G, i, 199). The 

 women (among the Caribs of the upper Pomeroon) who prepare the 

 bones are considered unclean for several months (ScR, ii, 431-2). 



79. With regard to the abandonment by the Indians of the locahty 

 where death has taken place, notlung can conquer their fear lest the 

 deceased's spirit, located somewhere in the immediate neighborhood, 

 should do them harm. On the Orinoco the practice of rooting up 

 the fields wliich deceased has planted, so soon as his widow or widows 

 have buried him, is also almost universal: They said they do it to 

 destroy all memory of the deceased (G, i, 207).' With the Anabali 

 and other tribes of this same river, when anyone dies they bury 

 him in the place where he had liis hearth and, covering the grave 

 with many mats, they forsake the village and all their fields, and 

 build and sow at 12 or 15 leagues' distance. They say that when 

 death has once entered their village they can not Jive in security. 

 But when these people subsequently advanced to a settled life — 

 as soon as the sick person died they broke up his home and burnt 

 everything which the deceased possessed (ibid., 206). One of the 

 chief's Avnves had died; and in consequence, although the settlement 

 was quite new, the houses most comfortable, the cassava still in the 

 field, every man had abandoned it, and left tliis poor Indian to look 

 after the crops (Rupununi River, ScG, 238). In an Ojana village 

 (Tuwoli's) on the Tapanahoni (Surinam) three people died in 1907 — 

 Tuwoli's adult son Paleku, and two others. One house of Tuwoli 

 and one of Paleku were burned. A month later, the village was 

 deserted — the survivors had established themselves in another one 

 (Go, 15). Among the Roucouyennes on the upper Parou, Cayenne, 

 the common laity must not make the slightest noise, or approach 

 anywhere near the grave of a piai, for fear of meeting liis fellow- 



1 The more probable reason, by analogy elsewhere in the Guianas, is for the purpose of supplying the 

 necessary drink at the funeral festivities. 



