Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/248

236 being exterminated. The murderers are hired, and put their own heads or those of their children in pledge when they go out on their expeditions, to be forfeited in case they bring in no strange head. The food of the departing head-hunter is set in the pig trough, as if to say that he is no better than swine or a dog if he comes back empty. If they return, bringing one or more heads, they are feasted in grand style; but if they have nothing, themselves or their children are slain.

The village chieflets nominally stand in a kind of patriarchal relation to their people, for they are all more or less directly or distantly related to one another. Hence they are usually spoken of as father by the older people, and grandfather by the younger. But the chief function of this patriarchal relation appears to be the exaction of exorbitant interest and hard terms for loans. The thoughts of the chiefs are turned to the accumulation of gold ornaments and to making a great name for themselves. With an eye to the latter object, they plant large stones in front of their houses—male stones, long and slim and set upright, and female stones, broad and flat, and laid at the feet of the former, either being sometimes hewn to the shape of the human figure. The institution of the stones, or the acquisition of a valuable ornament, is celebrated by a great feast, at which hecatombs of swine are slaughtered, the people, especially married persons, being expected to contribute portions of the pork. Every chief who desires to be of consequence must give such a feast once at least in his life; and then he gets a new name, corresponding with the additional luster with which he imagines his fame has been invested.

Women are in low estate, under the pressure of a kind of polygamy. Mourning for the loss of a wife is eclipsed by lamentations for the money she has cost the widowed husband. To the husband, the wife is "the one who does his work," or "who takes care of his food." If she does not suit him, instead of getting a divorce he takes another wife and makes the former one a slave, with a regret that he had paid so high a price for her. If the husband dies, his brother or father takes his wife; for it would be a pity to let the value she represents go out of the family, and a widow will not bring more than half as much in the outside matrimonial market as a young girl. The son takes the wife left by his father, provided she is not his own mother. Children grow up like the grass and weeds, without discipline. Parents love them too much to punish them, and limit their training to empty scoldings. The family feeling is very strong, and is hardly lessened after the members have grown up to maturity and married. Assaults upon women, even of the most trifling and indifferent character, are punished by fines.