28 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY f bulu 79 



hand-to-hand fi<jht then ensues, in which friends and enemies mix 

 with each other in the darkness, and the noise of arms is drowned 

 by the inciting war cries of the men, by the cries of the women and 

 the children, and by the barking of the dogs. 



The victorious enemy without mercy wreaks his savage vengeance 

 not onlj^ upon the fighting men, but also on old people, women, and 

 small children, nay, sometimes even on the domestic animals. The 

 younger women are, however, often spared and carried off as prisoners 

 of war, their fate being later to add to the number of their victors', 

 and esi)ecially the chief's, wives. There are also numerous instances 

 of small children being spared to be brought up as members of the 

 victorious tribe. For the rest, the Indian does not content himself 

 Avith merely killing his enemy. He wants to shed as much blood as 

 possible and delights in mutilating the body of the slain enemy, being 

 especially anxious to secure his head. The scene of a battle between 

 Jibaro Indians, therefore, generally appears a dreadful spectacle of 

 savage lust of destruction and thirst for blood. 



The lance, a terrible weapon of the Jibaros, inspires not only liv- 

 ing men but even the spirits and <lemons with fear. The soul of 

 an Indian killed with the lance in terror flees far away from the 

 mutilated body and does not remain for some time in the neighbor- 

 hood, as is believed to be the case at ordinary death. The rela- 

 tives themselves stand in such horror of the dead body that they 

 only hurriedly bury it on the same spot where they find it, there- 

 after speedily leaving the place. The devoted cult which the Ji- 

 baros generall}^ paj'^ to their dead relatives entirely fails with regard 

 to those killed in war, and food is never put on their graves. 



THE HEAD TROPHY (TSANTSA) AND ITS PREPARA- 

 TION 



As pointed out before, the Jibaros never make trophies (pi. 6) of 

 the heads of such enemies as belong to their own tribe; that is, with 

 whom they reckon blood relationship. An Indian who did this 

 would run the risk of being himself killed by his tribesmen, even by 

 those neutral before. On the other hand, it is the rule that when 

 a victory has been attained over a foreign tribe, the heads of the 

 slain enemies are taken. Most Jibaro warriors would consider any 

 victory over such an enemy incomplete, and the whole war expedi- 

 tion more or less a failure, unless they returned with one or several 

 head trophies. It, of course, not seldom happens that the Jibaro 

 is able to kill an enemy but not to take his head, because his com- 

 rades are able to secure the dead body and perhaps to defeat the 

 slayers. In such a case there can not be a real victory feast. It 

 occurs, however, sometimes, that an enthusiastic Jibaro warrior in- 



