members of their families, which have thus been preserved, play a
prominent part in the great feasts which the inhabitants of a Mafulu
village celebrate at intervals of perhaps fifteen or twenty years. Great
preparations are made for such a celebration. A series of tall posts,
one for each household, is erected in the open space which intervenes
between the two rows of the village houses. Yams and taro are fastened
to the upper parts of the posts; and below them are hung in circles the
skulls and arm and leg bones of dead chiefs, their wives, and kinsfolk,
which have been preserved in the manner described. Any skulls and bones
that remain over when all the posts have been thus decorated are placed
on a platform, which has either served for the ordinary exposure of a
chief's corpse or has been specially erected for the purpose of the
festival. At a given moment of the ceremony the chief of the clan cuts
down the props which support the platform, so that the skulls and bones
roll on the ground. These are picked up and afterwards distributed,
along with some of the skulls and bones from the posts, by the chief of
the clan to the more important of the invited guests, who wear them as
ornaments on their arms in a great dance. None but certain of the male
guests take part in the dance; the villagers themselves merely look on.
All the dancers are arrayed in full dancing costume, including heavy
head-dresses of feathers, and they carry drums and spears, sometimes
also clubs or adzes. The dance lasts the whole night. When it is over,
the skulls and bones are hung up again on the tall posts. Afterwards the
fruits and vegetables which have been collected in large quantities are
divided among the guests. On a subsequent morning a large number of pigs
are killed, and certain of the hosts take some of the human bones from
the posts and dip them in the blood which flows from the mouths of the
slaughtered pigs. With these blood-stained bones they next touch the
skulls and all the other bones on the posts, which include all the
skulls and arm and leg bones of all the chiefs and members of their
families and other prominent persons who have been buried in the village
or in any other village of the community since the last great feast was
held. These relics of mortality may afterwards be kept in the chief's
house, or hung on a tree, or simply thrown away in the forest; but in no
case are they ever again used for purposes of ceremony. The sl