the sight of a person dying. Therefore when one of their people was about
to expire they covered him up and placed him out of sight. If he or she
under those circumstances delayed in departing this life, the departure
was hastened by suffocation or strangulation. The Bororos were too
restless, and could not wait too long for anything.

They were easily suggestionized. Many of them would make excellent
subjects for hypnotic experiments. The women particularly were
extraordinarily sensitive to animal magnetism. They were much given to
hysterical displays. One of the reasons which was given me for hastening
the death of moribund Bororos was a curious superstition that the sight
of a dying person would cause the death of women, particularly if the
dying person happened to look in the direction of one woman present. The
women believed this so firmly that occasionally--the Bororos
asserted--women actually became ill and died when they saw a dead person.
This, no doubt, may have occurred merely by suggestion. Women were never
allowed, under ordinary circumstances, to see dead people.

When dancing the Bororos sprang on one foot and then on the other, always
hopping about in a circle.

Abnormalities and deformities were frequently noticeable among them, such
as hare-lip, supernumerary toes and fingers, and hypertrophy of the
limbs. Abnormalities of the genitals were general owing to tribal
customs.

One of the evil spirits most feared by the Bororos was called _aroi
koddo_--or "soul that falls." It was a spirit that came to earth solely
for the purpose of punishing the Bororos. They said that this spirit was
an extremely noisy one and its approach was announced by terrifying
sounds.

The Bororos were frightened of comets and had about them superstitions
similar to those of Europeans--that is to say, that their appearance
caused illness, misfortune and death. Solar and lunar eclipses, the
Bororos stated, were merely the result of anger on the part of evil
spirits. "The sun or moon were making faces because they were angry," was
their highly astronomical explanation of the phenomenon.

The Bororos had a firm belief that some of their ancestors lived in the
sun, others in the moon; and they said the ancestors caused the sun to
make faces when angry. In the sun also lived the head of all the
_barihs_, or medicine-men, the intermediary between humans and spirits;
whereas in the moon dwelt only those who could invoke the souls