" (_Pol. Res_., I., 527.) The same writer relates in his book on
Hawaii (148) that when a chief or king died on that island,
"the people ran to and fro without their clothes,
appearing and acting more like demons than human
beings; every vice was practised and almost every
species of crime perpetrated."
J.T. Irving tells a characteristic story (226-27) of an Indian girl
whom he found one day lying on a grave singing a song "so despairing
that it seemed to well out from a broken heart." A half-breed friend,
who thoroughly understood the native customs, marred his illusion by
informing him that he had heard the girl say to her mother that as she
had nothing else to do, she believed she would go and take a bawl over
her brother's grave. The brother had been dead five years!
The whole question of aboriginal mourning is patly summed up in a
witty remark made by James Adair more than a century ago (1775). He
has seen Choctaw mourners, he declares (187), "pour out tears like
fountains of water; but after thus tiring themselves they might with
perfect propriety have asked themselves, '_ And who is dead?_'"
THE TRUTH ABOUT WIDOW-BURNING
Instructive, from several points of view, is an incident related by
McLean (I., 254-55): A carrier Indian having been killed, his widow
threw herself on the body, shrieking and tearing her hair.
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