Note (return) — LECTURE XIV

Thus far we have found no evidence among the natives of New Guinea of a belief that the dead are permanently reincarnated in their human descendants. However, the inhabitants of Ayambori, an inland village about an hour distant to the east of Doreh, are reported to believe that the soul of a dead man returns in his eldest son, and that the soul of a dead woman returns in her eldest daughter.504 So stated the belief is hardly clear and intelligible; for if a man has several sons, he must evidently be alive and not dead when the eldest of them is born, and similarly with a woman and her eldest daughter. On the analogy of similar beliefs elsewhere we may conjecture that these Papuans imagine every firstborn son to be animated by the soul of his father, whether his father be alive or dead, and every firstborn daughter to be animated by the soul of her mother, whether her mother be alive or dead.