108 USEFUL PLANTS OF GUAM. 



made of rice and grated coconut. The women had their special 

 feasts, dressing themselves in gala attire and decorating their persons 

 with flowers and bright shells and beads. They arranged themselves 

 in a ring of twelve or thirteen, i-emaining stationary, singing in verse 

 their stories and ti-aditions in perfect time and in three-part harmony— 

 "treble, conti-alto, and falsetto" — accompanied at times by one of the 

 chief men. who assist at these festivities, carrying the tenor. The 

 words wei-e accompanied by movements of the hands, with which 

 they sounded rattles or castanets made of shells, all in such perfect 

 time and with movements of th* bodj' and gestures fitting so well with 

 the words as to call forth no little atlmiration for their aptitude for 

 learning things to which they apply themselves." 



Burial ceremonies. — At funerals the demonstrations of grief were 

 very extravagant, accompanied by much weeping, fasting, and sound- 

 ing on shell trumpets. The wailing continued a week or longer, 

 according to the afl:'ection and esteem in which the deceased was held. 

 The people assembled, dolefullj^ chanting, around a mound which they 

 raised over the grave, or near it. decorated with flowers, palms, shells, 

 and other things esteemed by them.* The mother of the deceased 

 usually cut off some hair as a souvenir of her grief, recording the 

 nights that had passed since his death by knots in a cord worn around 

 her neck. These demonstrations were greater on the occasion of a high 

 chiefs or Chamovri's death and at the death of a matron of distinction, 

 for in addition to the ordinary manifestations of grief they would 

 cover the streets with garlands of palms, erect arches and other devices 

 expressive of mourning, destroy coconut trees, burn houses, break 

 up boats, and i-aise before their houses the tattered sails as a sign of 

 their grief and sorrow, and to their songs thej' added elegies no less 

 eloquent than sorrowful, which grief would teach to the rudest and 

 most barbarous among them, exclaiming with many tears, that thence- 

 forth life would not be worth living, he being gone who was the life 

 of all, the sun of their nobility, the moon which lighted them in 

 the night of their ignorance, the star of all their deeds of prowess, 

 the valor of their battles, the honor of their race, of their village, of 

 their land; and thus they would continue far into the night, praising 

 the deceased, whose tomb they crowned with paddles as a symbol of 

 one celebrated as a fisherman, or with spears as a device for the brave, 

 or with both paddles and spears if he were both a brave warrior and 

 an expert fisherman.'' 



a Garcia, Vida y Martyrio de San\dtores, pp. 200-201, 1683. 



>> Chiefs were sometimes buried under buildings called " great houses" (debajo de 

 Unas casas que llaman grandes.) (Garcia, p. 220.) 



"The recitation or chanting of el^ies was called taitai, a word which is now used 

 for the verbs "to read" and "to pray." The corresponding nouns "prayer" and 

 "lecture" are called tinaitai. 



