Then they say to the jawbones, "Ye cry after your
comrades, that your grandfathers, or nephews, or children may not go
away." Their notion is that the souls of the dead deer and pigs
tarry near their jawbones and attract the souls of living deer and
pigs, which are thus drawn into the toils of the hunter. Thus the
wily savage employs dead animals as decoys to lure living animals to
their doom.
The Lengua Indians of the Gran Chaco love to hunt the ostrich, but
when they have killed one of these birds and are bringing home the
carcase to the village, they take steps to outwit the resentful
ghost of their victim. They think that when the first natural shock
of death is passed, the ghost of the ostrich pulls himself together
and makes after his body. Acting on this sage calculation, the
Indians pluck feathers from the breast of the bird and strew them at
intervals along the track. At every bunch of feathers the ghost
stops to consider, "Is this the whole of my body or only a part of
it?" The doubt gives him pause, and when at last he has made up his
mind fully at all the bunches, and has further wasted valuable time
by the zigzag course which he invariably pursues in going from one
to another, the hunters are safe at home, and the bilked ghost may
stalk in vain round about the village, which he is too timid to
enter.
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