ROTH] DEATH AND MOURNING 655 
the Orinoco), he found necklaces, ornaments, and a hammock, and 
at the side of each a vessel which he learned later contained the 
couria to stimulate the deceased in his travels in the other world (Cr, 
544). Humboldt thus describes what he saw in the cavern of Ata- 
ruipes, the cemetery of the destroyed tribe of the Ature, a people 
belonging to the same linguistic stock as the Saliva. It contains 
nearly 600 skeletons, well preserved and regularly placed. Every 
skeleton reposes in a sort of basket made of the petioles of the palm 
tree . . . from 10 inches to 3 feet 4inches long .. . The bones have 
been prepared in three different manners, either whitened in the air 
and the sun, dyed red with annatto, or, like mummies, varnished 
with odoriferous resins and enveloped in leaves of the heliconia or of 
the plantain tree. The Indians informed us that the fresh corpse 
is placed in damp ground, that the flesh may be consumed by degrees. 
Some months afterwards it is taken out and the flesh remaining on 
the bones is scraped off with sharp stones ... Earthen vases, half 
baked, are found near the mapires or baskets. They appear to con- 
tain the bones of the same family. The largest of these... urns 
are 5 feet high and 3 feet 3 inches long [? wide]. The handles 
are made in the shape of crocodiles or serpents. The edges are 
bordered with painted meanders, labyrinths, and grecques (AVH, 
11, 289, 482’). In a cave high up among the rocks on the sland of 
Cucurital (Orinoco River close to the Ature village), Crévaux came 
across a large number of earthenware vessels of different shapes, of 
which each one contained remains of an Indian. Other remains were 
simply enveloped in a sort of palm mat (Cr, 561). This traveler 
was apparently under the impression that he was dealing with relics 
of the Guahibo, but, judging from what has been mentioned above 
concerning the Ature method of burial, the situation of the island in 
the Ature country, coupled with what he himself says concerning 
ground burial of a Guahibo chieftain, it is more probable that he 
was dealing with an Ature cemetery similar to that already referred 
to by Humboldt. 
853. Guahibo and Chiricoa—When any sick person [carried 
along] in the baskets dies on the march, the carrier leaves the track, 
and with a couple of assistants from among the last men in the file, 
buries him; but not always [says Gumilla] for I have on several 
occasions come across these people with their skulls and bones (G, 1, 
254). The latter portion of this statement of the old Spanish father 
points rather to the practice of exhumation and is of interest in con- 
nection with the following description given by Crévaux from among 
the same folk, a century and a half later, in so far as it relates to the 
exhumation and reinterment subsequent to a shorter or longer period 
of mourning. The French traveler is referring to the burial cere- 
