ON THE ORIGIN AND MIGEATIONS OP THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 71 



Bay of Islands ; the dead bodies in both cases having been wrapped 

 up in mats and laid on trestles raised a few feet above ground. 

 I afterwards found, however, that this was the usual mode of 

 disposing of the dead among the wild Indians of America, so far 

 north even as the Eed E-iver Colony in the Hudson's Bay Ter- 

 ritory, as witness the following quotation from the journal of the 

 Eev. Mr. "West, already quoted above : — 



" On the following morning I saw an Indian corpse staged, or 

 put iipon a few cross sticks, about 10 feet from the ground, at a 

 short distance from the fort. The property of the dead, which 

 may consist of a kettle, axe, and a few additional articles, is gen- 

 erally put into the case, or wrapped in the buffalo-skin with the 

 body, under the idea that the deceased will want them, or that 

 the spirit of these articles will accompany the departed spirit in 

 travelling to another world."* 



On the occasion of my visit to the cemetery at Kororarika I 

 observed two other customs or practices of the South Sea Islanders, 

 indicating, together with that of keeping the dead above ground, 

 an Egyptian or contemporary origin, as ancient at least as that of 

 the sojourn of the children of Israel in Egypt. There happened 

 during my visit to be one of those periodical mournings for the 

 dead in progress which are symptomatic of a similar origin. A 

 number of native men and women were assembled in the cemetery 

 • — the former for the most part strongly tattooed, while the latter 

 were ever and anon cutting themselves with mussel-shells till the 

 blood streamed down from their cheeks as they gazed intently at 

 the remains of the deceased ; for one of the mummy-cases having 

 in the meantime been taken down from the trestle and opened, 

 the bones of the deceased — in all likelihood those of a superior 

 chief, long deceased — were spread upon a mat on the ground ; 

 the ceremony being occasionally relieved with sudden bursts of 

 dismal and unearthly wailings and bowlings in honor of the dead. 

 Now, it is worthy of remark, as a confirmation of my theory as to 

 the extreme antiquity of the Polynesian and Indo-American races, 

 that both of these savage practices — tattooing and cutting for the 

 dead — which were doubtless common in ancient Egypt and among 

 the earlier post-diluvian nations, were expressly forbidden in the 

 laws of Moses to the children of Israel, as we find in the Book of 

 Leviticus, chap. xix. 28 : " Te shall not make any cuttings in 

 your flesh for the dead, nor peint any maeks upon yof ; I am 

 the Lord." The practice of tattooing has all along been a national 

 practice among the South Sea Islanders, although long disused 

 in some of the islands ; and the Eev. Mr. West informs us that 

 it is still occasionally observed among the Indiana of Hudson's 

 Bay. 



* "Journal of a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North 

 America"; by John West, M.A. 



