The skulls are at first
exposed on the branches of two or three dead trees which stand in an
open space of every village surrounded by large stones which serve
as seats. The people then dance round them and feast and get drunk.
When the flesh has decayed from the head, the man who cut it off
takes it home and preserves it as a relic, while his companions do
the same with the hands and the feet. Similar customs are observed
by the Apoyaos, another tribe in the interior of Luzon.
Among the Lhota Naga, one of the many savage tribes who inhabit the
deep rugged labyrinthine glens which wind into the mountains from
the rich valley of Brahmapootra, it used to be a common custom to
chop off the heads, hands, and feet of people they met with, and
then to stick up the severed extremities in their fields to ensure a
good crop of grain. They bore no ill-will whatever to the persons
upon whom they operated in this unceremonious fashion. Once they
flayed a boy alive, carved him in pieces, and distributed the flesh
among all the villagers, who put it into their corn-bins to avert
bad luck and ensure plentiful crops of grain.
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