308 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts- 9 and Letters. 
them home. 7,1 North of the Congo the initiates recount mar¬ 
vels of the ceremony, saying that they were roasted, that they 
entirely change their habits and life, and that they receive a 
spirit quite different and quite new lights. 1 2 In the valley of 
the Congo the young men and women fall down in a fit and 
are carried away to an enclosed place outside of the town. 
They are supposed to have died. But parents and friends 
supply food, and the doctor brings them to life again. 3 
The natives of Bondei cause their boys to pass through a 
fire in a pit in which they are supposed to be burned to death. 
They are “killed” with a bamboo sword, and the bloody en¬ 
trails of a fowl are laid on the initiate to frighten the boys 
who are looking on. 4 
IV. 
AMERICAN INITIATION CEREMONIES. 
We shall now examine the ceremonies of the North Ameri¬ 
can Indians, a people on a higher plane of culture than the 
Australians or the Central Africans. Some of the tribes of 
these peoples have been studied with great thoroughness, and a 
good example of such study is the monograph by Professor 
Franz Boas on the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia. 5 
This excellent work may be supplemented by articles on the 
Aavahos and Zunis and other Indian tribes in the Journal of 
American Folk-Lore and in the American Antliropoiogist, as 
well as by other monographs issued under the enlightened su¬ 
perintendence of the late director of the United States Bureau 
of Ethnology, Major J. W. Powell. To these must be added 
the work done by the British Association for the Advancement 
of Science on the Indian tribes of northwestern Canada, and 
1 Mary A. Kingsley, “Travels in West Africa,” p. 531. 
2 J. G. Frazer, “The Golden Bough,” vol. 3, p. 428. 
s J. G. Frazer, 1. c., vol. 3, pp. 425-426. 
4 Godfrey Dale, “The Natives’ of Bondei,” Journal of the Anthropo¬ 
logical Institute, vol. 25, p. 189. 
s Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895. 
