54 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [VOL. 5» 



they wish to decorate it. They say that the resurrectionists are not 

 called by men, but directly by the bope, and no one is supposed to 

 know who they are. 



When the village awakes to find the bones already prepared, the 

 din is again unchained, the mother and female friends again slash 

 themselves from head to foot, wail, and daub their bodies with black 

 paste made principally from a fruit called genipa-pa, while two men 

 sit on a palm-leaf rug and decorate the skull with a layer of bright 

 red makaw feathers. This weird drama continues all day with little 

 interruption, the players and singers relieving one another from 

 time to time. And if some of their brethren from a neighboring 

 village should visit them, the bakororo, as this noise is called, may 

 continue all night and all the next day. Finally the concert ceases, 

 and at sunset the basket of bones is laid away in the little cemetery 

 outside the village, where the bope will take possession of them in 

 due season, though only the priest is supposed to know when. 

 Through constant howling during the bakororo, the family of the 

 deceased become so hoarse that they cannot speak above a whisper, 

 but the drinking of clay water, they say, relieves them. 



As the Bororo is "very bad," they say, he is doomed forever to 

 wander and suffer in the lower regions and be subject to constant 

 eviction. He takes up his abode in the bodies of certain fish and 

 mammals, and when the creature dies the spirit must seek a new 

 dwelling and be exorcised from the bodies of fish, fowl, or beast by 

 the priest before the meat can be eaten. To eat it without this 

 ceremony would cause sickness and death. Not every creature, nor 

 even every member of certain species, is inhabited by a bope. Its- 

 presence is indicated only by certain markings or other peculiarities. 

 In exorcising the bope the priest faces and calls upon the sun with 

 loud yells, ecstatic jumping and trembling, slapping the fish, spitting 

 and blowing into its mouth. Corn also must be exorcised, as they 

 say they were once made desperately sick by eating it without this 

 ceremony. Only the priests are exalted to an abode with the sun 

 at death ; they are not chosen by men, but by the bope. It comes 

 about somewhat in this manner : Some day a Bororo may be taken 

 with a fit, and a priest of the tribe will be called to determine the 

 disease and to say whether he will live or die. After consideration 

 he may say to those present, " Piadudu [humming-bird] is in deadly 

 combat with a bope. If he surrenders to the bope he will become 

 a priest, but if he continues to resist he will die." If Piadudu re- 

 covers, it is considered that he has given himself up to the bope, and 

 is therefore qualified for the priesthood. But the certificate of 



