KABSTBN] BLOOD REVENGE, WAR, AND VICTORY FEASTS 75 



take the tsantsa^ which as usual has been kept tied to a lance stuck 

 into the ground at the door. The tsantsa is carefully placed upon 

 the shield. On the latter are also laid the small pot containing 

 juice of tobacco and a knife. 



The slayer and the priest now prepare to sit down, each taking his 

 stand in front of the seat intended for him. The priest lays his 

 hands upon the shoulders of the slayer and makes him sit down on the 

 seat, immediately raise himself, aifd again definitively sit down. 

 Thereafter the slayer repeats the same with the priest, laying his 

 hands upon his shoulders, making him quickly sit down, immediately 

 raise himself, and again sit down. Both men now remain sitting 

 opposite each other. Also, the three other persons take their seats, 

 without ceremony, the slayer having the medicine man sitting on his 

 right hand and his wife and daughter on his left. 



The priest gives juice of tobacco to the slayer through the nose and 

 to his wife and daughter through the mouth, then to the medicine man 

 through the nose, and finalW he himself also takes some. The medi- 

 cine man is now the principal person acting. Taking the tsantsa and 

 the knife, he takes some juice of tobacco with the point of the latter 

 and coats the tsantsa with it at the neck opening. He makes a 

 cutting motion around the neck of the head with the knife as if he 

 were cutting it off. Then he carefully loosens the cotton string at- 

 tached to the three chonta pins, which have been stuck through the 

 lips of the head (cf. p. 31), and lastly removes the chonta pins 

 themselves, one after the other, putting them down on the shield. 

 Finally he gives juice of tobacco to the sla5^er and hangs the trophy 

 around his neck. 



While the medicine man has been engaged in these actions, the 

 women, headed by the priestess, have been dancing around him and 

 the other persons sitting around the shield, singing at every im- 

 portant moment of his operations, in the same slow, solemn time as 

 before, the refrains: ''^ Chhnhuylrumha-yamdyunhbd-pakeketd-koko- 

 keho-shimhdgasme-mishcihose-odod-. . .," etc. 



Thus, when the medicine man seizes the trophy, when he makes 

 the cutting motion around its neck with his knife, when he removes 

 the cotton string and the chonta pins, and, lastly, when he hangs the 

 trophy around the neck of the slayer, the women accompany all these 

 actions by dancing, singing the refrains mentioned, and shaking 

 their rattles. Again, the four warriors armed with lances and 

 shields at the same time accompany the operations of the medicine 

 man in another Avay : At each of the critical moments just mentioned 

 they hold the shield, extended in a horizontal jDosition, with the left 

 hand, and with their lances give it from below three or four powerful 

 resounding strokes. This ceremony is called yoJctinyu. 



