The Ashochimi, a mountain tribe of Californian Indians now extinct, as described by Powers,[[19]] feared certain hawks and owls, regarding them as malignant spirits which they must conciliate by offerings, and by wearing mantles of feathers, thus:

When a great white owl alights near a village in the evening, and hoots loudly, the headman at once assembles all his warriors in council to determine whether Mr. Strix demands a life or only money.... If they incline to believe that he demands a life, someone in the village is doomed and will speedily die. But they generally vote that he can be placated by an offering, and immediately set out a quantity of shell-money and pinole, whereupon the valorous trenchermen fall to eat the pinole themselves, and in the morning the headman decorates himself with owl-feathers, carries out the shell-money with solemn formality and flings it into the air under the tree where the owl perched.

A somewhat more spiritual view was taken by the Pimas of old times in the southwestern deserts. Their ideas of the destiny of the human soul varied, but one theory was that at death the soul passed into the body of an owl. “Should an owl happen to be hooting at the time of a death, it was believed that it was waiting for the soul.... Owl-feathers were always given to a dying person. They were kept in a long, rectangular box or basket of maguey leaf. If the family had no owl-feathers at hand they sent to the medicine-man who always kept them. If possible, the feathers were taken from a living bird when collected; the owl might then be set free or killed.”[[83]]

CHAPTER X
A FLOCK OF FABULOUS FOWLS

We are pretty sure to hear of the phenix every time a tailor or soap-maker announces that he will rebuild his shop after it has been burned; and its picture is a favorite with the advertising department of fire-insurance companies. The world first learned of this remarkable fowl when Herodotus brought back to Greece his wonder-tales from Egypt, some 400 years before Cleopatra made so much trouble by mixing love and politics. It will be well to quote in full the account by the great Greek traveller as it is found in the translation by Laurent:

There is another sacred bird, called the “phenix;” which I myself never saw except in a picture, for it seldom makes its appearance among the Egyptians—only every five-hundred years, according to the people of Heliopolis. They state that he comes on the death of his sire. If at all like his picture, this bird may be thus described in size and shape. Some of his feathers are of the color of gold; others are red. In outline he is exceedingly similar to the eagle, and in size also. This bird is said to display an ingenuity which to me does not appear credible: he is represented as coming out of Arabia, and bringing with him his father to the temple of the Sun, embalmed in myrrh, and there burying him. The manner in which this is done is as follows: In the first place he sticks together an egg of myrrh, as much as he can carry, and then tries if he can bear the burden. This experiment achieved, he accordingly scoops out the egg sufficiently to deposit his sire within. He next fills with fresh myrrh the opening in the egg by which the body was inclosed; thus the whole mass containing the carcase is still of the same weight. Having thus completed the embalming, he transports him into Egypt and to the temple of the Sun. (Euterpe, Book II.)

Herodotus seems to have been most interested in the odorous embalming, quaintly referred to in a 17th-century song—

Have you e’r smelt what Chymick Skill

From Rose or Amber doth distill?

Have you been near that Sacrifice