I endured—such is the word—this sight for an hour; but I did not feel courage enough to remain in the cabin any longer. The odour that exhaled from the corpse was unbearable. I went out, and breathed the fresh air; my guide followed me, and I begged him to tell me what had occurred from the beginning of the illness of the deceased.
“Willingly,” he answered me.
Delighted to breathe freely, I listened with interest to the following recital:
“When Dalayapo,” said the narrator, “fell sick, they took him to the grand square, to apply severe remedies to him; that is to say, all the men of the village came in arms, and, to the sound of the gong and the tom-tom, they danced around the sick man from the rising to the setting of the sun. But this grand remedy had no effect—his illness was incurable. At the setting of the sun they placed our friend in his house, and no more heed was paid to him: his death was certain, as he would not dance with his fellow-countrymen.”
I smiled at the remedy and the reasoning, but I did not interrupt the narrator.
“For two days Dalayapo was in a state of suffering; then, at the end of these two days, he breathed no more; and, when that was perceived, they immediately put him on the bench where we saw him just now. Then the provisions that he possessed were gathered together to feed the assistants, who paid him all due honours. Each one made a speech in his praise: his nearest relations began the first, and his body was surrounded with fire to dry it up. When the provisions are consumed, the strangers will leave the cabin, and only the widow and a few relations will wait until the body is thoroughly dried. In a fortnight’s time he will be placed in a large hole that is dug under his house. He will be put in a niche, or aperture, in the wall, where already his deceased relatives’ remains are deposited, and then all is over.”
This hole, thought I, must be similar to the one I went into the other night at Laganguilan.
The explanation that I had just received completely satisfied me, and I did not request to be present again at the ceremony. I resolved, since I was very comfortably seated, under the shade of a balété, upon availing myself of the obliging disposition of my guide, to ask him to inform me, suddenly changing the conversation all the while, how his tribe managed to wage war on the Guinans, their mortal enemies.
Weapons of the Tinguian Indians.