Page:The Melanesians Studies in their Anthropology and Folklore.djvu/152

130 go boldly, but with awe; and this is the sign of it; as he goes into the holy house he puts away his bag, and washes his hands thoroughly, to shew that the ghost shall not reject him with disgust; just as when you go into the really Holy House you take off your hat from your head, a sign that you reverence the true Spirit.' The pig was afterwards eaten by the worshippers. To sacrifice in this way is called hoasi, the ghost to whom the sacrifice is made 'ataro. It should be observed that Harumae had not been dead many years; when this account was written, the elder men remembered; him alive; nor was he a great fighting man, but a kind and I generous man, thought to have much mana. His shrine was! a small house in the village, in which relics of him were kept. No one since his time had died whom the people thought worthy of such worship; had it been so Harumae would have been neglected.

In Florida, as has been said, the objects of worship are tindalo, to whom the food consumed in the fire is offered as their portion. Some are commonly known by name, others are known only to one man and another who has found out or been taught how to approach them, and calls each tindalo his own, nagana. We are concerned here with sacrifices; public, as offered to a well-known tindalo, powerful in such things as) concern the general well-being; and private, offered by individuals to the tindalo of whom they have particular knowledge. In every village there was the tindalo accepted at the time, and the chief was the sacrificer. He had received from his predecessor the knowledge how to 'throw' the sacrifice to this tindalo, and he imparted this knowledge to his son or nephew, whom he designed to leave as his successor. The place of sacrifice was near the village, an ancient one or newly made, according to the time in which this tindalo had been in vogue, an enclosure with a little house or shrine in which relics were