death by murdering somebody who has the reputation of being an
evil spirit incarnate. If they succeed in doing so, they celebrate the
preliminary mourning ceremonies called _djawarra_ and _djawarra baba_,
but the festival of the dead is changed into a memorial festival, at
which the people dance and sing to the accompaniment of drums (_tifa_),
gongs, and triton shells; and instead of carving a wooden image of the
deceased, they make marks on the fleshless skull of the murdered
man.[514]

[Sidenote: Beliefs of the natives of Windessi as to the life after
death. Medicine-men inspired by the spirits of the dead.]

The natives of Windessi are said to have the following belief as to the
life after death, though we are told that the creed is now known to very
few of them; for their old beliefs and customs are fading away under the
influence of a mission station which is established among them.
According to their ancient creed, every man and every woman has two
spirits, and in the nether world, called _sarooka_, is a large house
where there is room for all the people of Windessi. When a woman dies,
both her spirits always go down to the nether world, where they are
clothed with flesh and bones, need do no work, and live for ever. But
when a man dies, only one of his spirits must go to the under world; the
other may pass or transmigrate into a living man or, in rare cases, into
a living woman; the person so inspired by a dead man's spirit becomes an
_inderri_, that is, a medicine-man or medicine-woman and has power to
heal the sick. When a person wishes to become a medicine-man or
medicine-woman, he or she acts as follows. If a man has died, and his
friends are sitting about the corpse lamenting, the would-be
medicine-man suddenly begins to shiver and to rub his knee with his
folded hands, while he utters a monotonous sound. Gradually he falls
into an ecstasy, and if his whole body shakes convulsively, the spirit
of the dead man is supposed to have entered into him, and he becomes a
medicine-man. Next day or the day after he is taken into the forest;
some hocus-pocus is performed over him, and the spirits of lunatics, who
dwell in certain thick trees, are invoked to take possession of him. He
is now himself called a lunatic, and on returning home behaves as if he
were half-crazed. This completes his training as a medicine-man, and he
is now fully qualified to kill or cure the sick. His mode of cure
depends on the native theor