Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/362

348, of which the following is an outline: An endeavor is first made to procure a lock of hair, some saliva, a piece of the sleeve and of the neck of the dress, or of the rim of the hat or headdress which has absorbed the perspiration of the person to be bewitched. These are placed with a small piece of the skin and flesh of a dead man, dried and roasted before the fire, and rubbed and pounded together. The mixture is then tied up in a piece of skin or cloth, which is covered over with spruce-gum. The little package is next placed in a human bone, which is broken for the purpose, and afterward carefully tied together and put within a human skull. This again is placed in a box, which is tied up and gummed over and then buried in the ground in such a way as to be barely covered. A fire is next built nearly, but not exactly, on the top of the box, so as to warm the whole. Then the evilly disposed man, beating his head against a tree, names and denounces his enemy. This is done at night or in the early morning, and in secret, and is frequently repeated till the enemy dies. The actor must not smile or laugh, and must talk as little as possible till the spell has worked. If a man has reason to suppose that he is being practiced on in this way, he or his friends must endeavor to find the deposit and carefully unearth it. Rough handling of the box may prove immediately fatal. It is then cautiously unwrapped and the contents are thrown into the sea. If the evilly disposed person was discovered, he was in former years immediately killed. If, after making up the little package of relics as above noted, it is put into a frog, the mouth of which is tied up before it is released, a peculiar sickness is produced which causes the abdomen of the person against whom the sorcery is directed to swell.

After death the body is immediately coffined, not a moment being lost. Should death occur at night, the coffin-box is set outside the house at once, till daylight may admit of its being disposed of. The face of the dead is first washed and the hair combed, and then the face and head are painted with vermilion and the body wrapped in blankets by near relatives or friends. It is then put into any box of a suitable size that can be found, generally one of those used for the storage of house effects or dried fish. The box so employed is named tik-ī-ā'-tse. The body is doubled up, and no hesitation is felt in using violence toward it in order to press it into the box. The graves of the Kwakiool are of two principal kinds: little scaffolds to which the coffin-box is lashed, high upon the branches of fir-trees, and known as tuh-pē'-kh; and tombs built of slabs of wood on the ground. Small tent-like erections of calico are now often substituted for the latter, and the bodies of relatives or friends, dying at different times, are in both cases often placed together. If a person of importance or much