ake a corpse out of the hut by the
ordinary door, but always lifted a piece of the bark wall near which the
dead man lay and then drew him through the opening.[738] Among the
Esquimaux of Bering Strait a corpse is usually raised through the
smoke-hole in the roof, but is never taken out by the doorway. Should
the smoke-hole be too small, an opening is made in the rear of the house
and then closed again.[739] When a Greenlander dies, "they do not carry
out the corpse through the entry of the house, but lift it through the
window, or if he dies in a tent, they unfasten one of the skins behind,
and convey it out that way. A woman behind waves a lighted chip backward
and forward, and says: 'There is nothing more to be had here.'"[740]
Similarly the Hottentots, Bechuanas, Basutos, Marotse, Barongo, and many
other tribes of South and West Africa never carry a corpse out by the
door of the hut but always by a special opening made in the wall.[741] A
similar custom is observed by the maritime Gajos of Sumatra[742] and by
some of the Indian tribes of North-west America, such as the Tlingit and
the Haida.[743] Among the Lepchis of Sikhim, whose houses are raised on
piles, the dead are taken out by a hole made in the floor.[744] Dwellers
in tents who practise this custom remove a corpse from the tent, not by
the door, but through an opening made by lifting up an edge of the
tent-cover: this is done by European gypsies[745] and by the Koryak of
north-eastern Asia.[746]

[Sidenote: The motive of the custom is a desire to prevent the ghost
from returning to the house.]

In all such customs the original motive probably was a fear of the ghost
and a wish to exclude him from the house, lest he should return and
carry off the survivors with him to the spirit land. Ghosts are commonly
credited with a low degree of intelligence, and it appears to be
supposed that they can only find their way back to a house by the
aperture through which their bodies were carried out. Hence people made
a practice of taking a corpse out not by the door, but through an
opening specially made for the purpose, which was afterwards blocked up,
so that when the ghost returned from the grave and attempted to enter
the house, he found the orifice closed and was obliged to turn away
disappointed. That this was the train of reasoning actually followed by
some peoples may be gathered from the explanations which they themselves
give of the custom. Thus among the Tuski