Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/65

 TJiL Indians of tJic Issd-Japurd District. 53

possible to mention in detail. It would appear to be the maddest orgie of drunken abandonment, yet it never touches eroticism.

Maddest and most impressive is the dance that follows the return of the warriors from a successful fight. All the prisoners, except any young children who may safely be kept for slaves, are knocked down and killed with wooden swords, and an anthropophagous feast of vengeance follows. These Indians are cannibals, primarily, in my opinion, for purposes of continued hostility. Human flesh is only on rare occasions eaten for lack of animal food, never for gluttony, nor, so far as I could discover, with any idea that the qualities of the eaten would be absorbed by the eater. It is a purely ceremonial matter, a ritual of vengeance, in which the women have no share, except the Chief's wife, to whom the genital organs of the male victims are allotted. This is noteworthy in that such parts of any animal are on no other occasion eaten by these tribes, who consider the intestines, brains, and so forth as carrion, unfit for human consumption. At the cannibal feast only the legs, arms, and fleshy parts of the head are eaten. The teeth are carefully preserved by the slayer to make into a necklace, visible proof of his prowess and completed revenge. The skulls are dried and hung outside or on the rafters of the vialoka above the drums. What is not consumed is thrown into the river, and thus carried down stream, away from the Indian Paradise, which lies far up-stream. Some tribes bury the trunk with public jeers and insults, or it is often left for the wild dogs to devour. The humerus is made into a flute. The forearm, with dried hand and contracted fingers, makes a gruesome ladle to stir the pot wherein the human flesh, cut in pieces and highly seasoned with peppers, is cooked by the old women of the tribe, what time the warriors, the gory heads of the slain on their dancing