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INDIAN HOME LIFE. 97 
and what you possess, also, is reckoned as his, if he 
want it. When he offers to you his house and all in 
it, it is no idle custom without meaning, for even 
his household furniture, if there be any, is at your 
disposal. 
The ancient ‘Caribs, if we may credit the statements 
of early writers, believed in some sort of a future 
_state, and also that their departed friends were secret 
witnesses of their conduct. “The brave had the 
enjoyment of supreme felicity with their wives and 
captives; the cowardly were doomed to everlasting 
banishment beyond the mountains. This was their 
next world. They dimly recognized a Divinity, a 
great creator of all things, and vaguely offered their 
homage and sacrifice.” 
It is supposed that each person had his tutelar deity ; 
it may have been a tree or a rock. The northern 
tribes, the Arowaks, had their zemes, or household 
gods, when discovered by the Spaniards. “The 
Caribs erected a rustic altar of banana leaves and 
rushes, whereon they placed the earliest of their 
fruits and choicest of their viands, as peace-offerings 
to incensed omnipotence. They could not be in- 
sensible to the existence of a great ruler, when the 
convulsions of nature were so great as they witnessed 
in the earthquake and hurricane.” 
In religion, at the present time, the Caribs of Do- 
minica are Roman Catholic, and are very observant of 
the rites of the church. Upon the occasion of the 
priest’s monthly visit, nearly all flock to hear him, 
even if they do not obey his injunctions; and the sick 
are brought, and the dying, to obtain the sacrament. 
At the close of service, one Sabbath, word was 
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