They do all this because they believe that the wandering ghost
of the slain bear would attack them on the first opportunity, if
they did not thus appease it. Or they stuff the skin of the slain
bear with hay; and after celebrating their victory with songs of
mockery and insult, after spitting on and kicking it, they set it up
on its hind legs, "and then, for a considerable time, they bestow on
it all the veneration due to a guardian god." When a party of Koryak
have killed a bear or a wolf, they skin the beast and dress one of
themselves in the skin. Then they dance round the skin-clad man,
saying that it was not they who killed the animal, but some one
else, generally a Russian. When they kill a fox they skin it, wrap
the body in grass, and bid him go tell his companions how hospitably
he has been received, and how he has received a new cloak instead of
his old one. A fuller account of the Koryak ceremonies is given by a
more recent writer. He tells us that when a dead bear is brought to
the house, the women come out to meet it, dancing with firebrands.
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