CHAPTER XVI 
Bororo Legends — The Religion of the Bororos — Funeral Rites 
T HE Bororos believed in spirits of the mountains and 
the forest, which haunted special places in order to 
do harm to living beings. Those spirits came out 
at night. They stole, ill-treated, and killed. In rocks, 
said the Bororos, dwelt their ancestors in the shape of 
parrots. The Bororos were greatly affected by dreams 
and nightmares, which they regarded as events that had 
actually happened and which generally brought bad luck. 
They were often the communications of evil spirits, or of 
the souls of ancestors. The Bororos had many supersti¬ 
tions regarding animals, which they individualized in 
their legends, giving them human intelligence, especially 
the colibri (humming-bird), the macaw, the monkey, the 
deer, and the leopard. 
The stars, according to these savages, were all 
Bororo boys. Let me give you a strange legend concern¬ 
ing them. 
“ The women of the aidej a had gone to pick Indian 
corn. The men were out hunting. Only the old women 
had remained in the aide j a with the children. With an 
old woman was her nephew, playing with a bow and arrow. 
The arrows had perforated sticks, which the boy filled with 
Indian corn. When the boy had arrived home, he had 
asked his grandmother to make a kind of polenta with 
Indian corn. He had invited all the other boys of the 
aide j a to come and eat. While the grandmother was 
cooking, the children played, and between themselves 
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