the privileges of the tribe,
were outlaws in this world and the next; and those whose bodies were not
properly disposed of lost the support of the tribal deities or of the
subterranean Powers.[148] It was also held that the body retained the
form in which it went down to hades;[149] hence the widespread dread of
mutilation, as among the Chinese still. On the other hand the brave were
rewarded.[150]

+74+. Sometimes earthly rank determines future conditions--a natural
corollary to what is stated above (Sec.72 f.). A distinction is made
between nobles and common people in the Bowditch Islands.[151] The
members of the Fijian Areoi Society are held to enjoy special privileges
in the other world.[152] The belief in the Marquesas Islands is that the
sky is for high gods and nobles.[153] According to John Smith, in
savage Virginia only nobles and priests were supposed to survive after
death.[154] The North American Mandans (of Dakota), according to one
view, assign to the brave in the hereafter the delightful villages of
the gods.[155] When souls are supposed to enter into animals different
animals are assigned to nobles and common men.[156] Kings and nobles
retain their superiority of position and are sometimes attended by their
slaves and officers.[157]

+75+. The manner of death is sometimes significant. The Karens hold that
persons killed by elephants, famine, or sword, do not enter the abode of
the dead, but wander on the earth and take possession of the souls of
men.[158] In Borneo it is supposed that those who are killed in war
become specters.[159] The belief in the Marquesas Islands is that
warriors dying in battle, women dying in childbirth, and suicides go up
to the sky.[160] In regard to certain modes of death opposite opinions
are held in the Ladrone (Marianne) Islands and the Hervey group: in the
former those who die by violence are supposed to be tortured by demons,
those who die a natural death are believed to be happy; according to the
view in the latter group these last are devoured by the goddess of
death, and the others are happy. In the one case violent death, it would
seem, is supposed to be due to the anger of the gods, and to be a sign
of something bad in the man; in the other case happiness is compensation
for the misfortune of a violent death, and natural death, being the fate
of ordinary people, leaves one at the mercy of the mistress of the other
world.

+76+. The advance to the conception of mor