thé dead are placed clasped together, and between the middle fingers is placed a small cross of perïiu.~ The aunt covers thé corpse with a black blanket (manta) which is sewn together. Four men volunteer to carry the body first to the church, then to the cemetery. In the new cemetery outside of town, as in thé ancient churchyard, the burial is head to the south, facing the church, a position in which people are loath to sieep. Around the grave a circle is drawn with an arrow point or blade, and on it a cross is marked-protection against witches.~ If a person has been witched to death, he is not really dead, and after four days the witches may try to exhume him and so "get a child"; i. e., another witch member. 42
The relatives remain in the house of the deceased four nights, which are referred to as four years. On the third day everybody washes his or her head. On the fourth day, before sunrise, everybody in the funerary house has to go to the river to sprinkle meal in the water and bathe. On their way going or returning, whatever sound they may hear, they are not to look backward-the deceased may be following.~ From the river they return to their respective houses, when the women prepare food for the ceremony that evening which the Corn chief and his assistants are to conduct. About 9 in the evening the Corn Fathers arrive at the house of the deceased and lay down their meal altar on wbich are medicine bowl, arrow points, and the prayer feathers made by the chief for tbe deceased. A line of meal is sprinkled from the altar to the door, for the deceased to come in by. On the meal road stands a bowl, to which each relative and each Corn Father has contributed a bit of food, and anyobjects, such as bow and arrow, used by the deceased. The Corn assistants stand in a row near the food offering. With a prayer feather the chief sprinkles all from the medicine bowl. Ail sing. The chief sprinkles meal on the meal road, in his song calling to the deceased to enter. Then the chief opens the house door, singing that the deceased is coming. "You can not see him, but you hear footsteps outside and fumbling at the door." The chief bids the deceased to come and eat. Then from the Mother to the door the chief sprinkles thé road for him to leave by. Then the Fathers take out the bowl of food and the prayer feathers and "chase him (thé deceased) out of the village." With them they also take pieces out from the deceased's clothes and personal belongings. The Fathers return on a run and close thé door, making a cross on it with their arrow point A high bush with a white bloom which grows in the mountain arroyos.
<° Cp. Parsons, 9: 168-169.
See pp. 278, 438.
See p. 438.
A notion held also by the Tewa and at Zuni.
« 1 do not understand this reference, as the Com chiefs are not possessed of Mothers. 6066°–32––17