[260] Stephen Powers, Indians of California, pp. 181, 207. The Tasmanians and Fuegians, probably the lowest of known tribes, burned their dead. Hyades et Deniker, Mission Scientifique, p. 379; Fenton, History of Tasmania, p. 95. Some tribes gave as a reason for burning their dead that otherwise bears and wolves would eat the corpse, and the soul would be obliged to take on their forms.—Pres. Message and Ac. Docs., 1851, pt. iii., p. 506.
[261] Alonso de la Peña Montenegro, Itinerario para Parrocos de Indios, p. 185 (Madrid, 1771).
[262] Clark, Indian Sign Language, p. 263.
[263] K. T. Preuss, in the Bastian Festschrift.
[264] Anthropologie des Naturvölker, Bd. i., p. 459.
[265] The application of the blood, observes Professor Granger, “bound together in some way those who were present at the rite” (Worship of the Romans, p. 210). This subject is fully discussed by Dr. H. C. Trumbull in his works, The Blood Covenant, and The Threshold Covenant.
[266] Castren, in the Introduction to his Finnische Mythologie, has some excellent remarks on the beneficial effects of shamanism. It is an effort to free the human mind from the shackles of blind natural forces; it recognises the dependence of the subjective on an objective will, etc.
[267] Myth and Science, p. 41.
[268] Hahn, Tsuni ǁGoam, p. 21.
[269] Ling Roth, Natives of Sarawak, vol. i., pp. 259, 271, 282; vol. ii., App., p. clxxv.