Note 61 — The Cycle of Life

The grave is generally of one of the forms indicated in Fig. 3, and when a depth of about three feet has been reached, the workers encounter stone slabs which protect a lower chamber.61 When these are reached, the diggers make an opening and thrusting in burning pine-sticks, they call to the dead within, “You must light your pipes with these.” As soon as the slabs are raised, the oldest female relative of the deceased goes into the grave, gathers up the bones of the last person interred, ties them into a bundle, and reburies them in one corner. There is at present no such type of burial chamber, as is described by La Gironière,62 nor is there a memory or tradition of such an arrangement. As his visit took place less than a century ago, it is unlikely that all trace of it would have been lost. The heavy rainfall in this district would make the construction and maintenance of such Page 286a chamber almost impossible, while the dread of leaving the corpses thus exposed to hostile spirits and the raids of enemies in search of heads would also argue against such a practice. His description of the mummifying or drying of the corpse by means of fires built around it63 is likewise denied by the old men of Manabo, who insist that they never had such a custom. It certainly does not exist to-day. In a culture, in which the influence of custom is as strong as it is here, it would seem that the care of the corpse, which is intimately related to the condition of the spirit in its final abode, would be one of the last things to change, while the proceedings following a death are to-day so uniform throughout the Tinguian belt, that they argue for a considerable antiquity.