Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/284

 258 The Natives of New Caledonia.

and rancorous souls are beaten by the dead chiefs ; there is no head chief. As in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and in Fiji, there are ghastly monsters which devour souls. Pindi once brought back from Hades a curious spear, and the feathers of a bird unknown on earth, to his tribesmen. The dead, as in Homer, speak in low twittering tones. The mosc dreaded ghost (as in Malay) is the spirit of a woman dead in child-bed, Ena. A white man told me that a native beside him was once killed by the fall of a tree. In dying he whispered that he had seen the face of a departed friend gazing at him.^ This element of belief is universal, and has a rather moral tendency.

I do not, myself, believe that the natives have any idea of a creative deity. A French missionary told me that they have, and gave me information which I noted down, but missionaries have greater difficulty than other inquirers in collecting facts of this kind. Before conversion the natives are shy of them, and after conversion are reluc- tant to speak of their old ideas. This gentleman, at all events, assured me that the Kanakas have a good God, Windone, maker of men and things. He dwells under- ground. There is also a bad spirit. Done, who lives in the bush. These beliefs, I think, occur only where the influence of missionaries has been felt. In my own inquiries I have only found " devil-fighting," and the worship of the dead Fathers, who, in dreams, warn them of impending dangers, and tell them where to find things lost. Or, as in the case of a servant of mine, they say that they have taken the articles themselves. By "worship" of the dead kinsmen, I here mean feeding them, a regular practice. There is a class of men who feed the dead, partly by eating on their own part, and also by leaving food inside a taboo hut. This is the kind of prayer used. " Here is food for you, dead Father ! Look out for and take care of me." One old man,

' This, according to Mr. Fison, is a common hallucination of the dying in Fiji. — A. L.