aughtered
pigs are cut up and the portions distributed among the guests, who carry
them away for consumption in their own villages.[328]

[Sidenote: Trace of ancestor worship among the Mafulu.]

This preservation of the skulls and bones of chiefs and other notables
for years, and the dipping of them in the blood of pigs at a great
festival, must apparently be designed to propitiate or influence in some
way the ghosts of the persons to whom the skulls and bones belonged in
their lifetime. But Mr. R. W. Williamson, to whom we are indebted for
the description of this interesting ceremony, was not able to detect any
other clear indications of ancestor worship among the people.[329]

[Sidenote: Worship of the dead among the natives of the Aroma district.]

However, a real worship of the dead, or something approaching to it, is
reported to exist among some of the natives of the Aroma district in
British New Guinea. Each family is said to have a sacred place, whither
they carry offerings for the spirits of dead ancestors, whom they
terribly fear. Sickness in the family, death, famine, scarcity of fish,
and so forth, are all set down to the anger of these dreadful beings,
who must accordingly be propitiated. On certain occasions the help of
the spirits is especially invoked and their favour wooed by means of
offerings. Thus, when a house is being built and the central post has
been erected, sacrifices of wallaby, fish, and bananas are presented to
the souls of the dead, and a prayer is put up that they will be pleased
to keep the house always full of food and to prevent it from falling
down in stormy weather. Again, when the natives begin to plant their
gardens, they first take a bunch of bananas and sugar-cane and standing
in the middle of the garden call over the names of dead members of the
family, adding, "There is your food, your bananas and sugar-cane; let
our food grow well, and let it be plentiful. If it does not grow well
and plentifully, you all will be full of shame, and so shall we." Again,
before the people set out on a trading expedition, they present food to
the spirits at the central post of the house and pray them to go before
the traders and prepare the people, so that the trade may be good. Once
more, when there is sickness in the family, a pig is killed and its
carcase carried to the sacred place, where the spirits are asked to
accept it. Sins, also, are confessed, such as that people have gathered
banana