Nos. 13, 14. Are assistants to the Shaman, stationed at the entrance to hit and hasten the departure of the evil being.
A chart of this character appears to have been seen among the natives of New Holland by Mr. James Manning, but not copied or fully described in his Notes on the Aborigines of New Holland (Jour. of Royal Society, New South Wales, Vol. XVI, p. 167). He mentions it in connection with a corrobery or solemn religious ceremony among adults, as follows: “It has for its form the most curious painting upon a sheet of bark, done in various colors of red, yellow, and white ochre, which is exhibited by the priest.” Such objects would be highly important for comparison, and their existence being known they should be sought for.
MORTUARY PRACTICES.
Several devices indicating death are presented under other headings of this paper. See, for example, page [103] and the illustrations in connection with the text.
According to Powers, “A Yokaia widow’s style of mourning is peculiar. In addition to the usual evidences of grief she mingles the ashes of her dead husband with pitch, making a white tar or unguent, with which she smears a band about 2 inches wide all around the edge of the hair (which is previously cut off close to the head), so that at a little distance she appears to be wearing a white chaplet.” (See Contrib. to N. A. Ethnol., III, p. 166.) Mr. Dorsey reports that mud is used by a mourner in the sacred-bag war party among the Osages. Many objective modes of showing mourning by styles of paint and markings are known, the significance of which are apparent when discovered in pictographs.
Figure 112 is copied from a piece of ivory in the museum of the Alaska Commercial Company, San Francisco, California, and was interpreted by an Alaskan native in San Francisco in 1882.
Fig. 112.—Votive offering. Alaska.
No. 1. Is a votive offering or “Shaman stick,” erected to the memory of one departed. The “bird” carvings are considered typical of “good spirits,” and the above was erected by the remorse-stricken individual, No. 3, who had killed the person shown in No. 2.