o represent the immortality of these deified spirits;
among them were some of the heavenly bodies, including the Pleiades and
the planet Jupiter, also the rainbow, the marine rainbow, and many
more. He adds that the embalmed bodies of some chiefs were worshipped
under the significant title of "sun-dried gods"; and that people prayed
and poured libations of kava at the graves of deceased relatives.[148]

[148] J. B. Stair, _Old Samoa_, pp. 210 _sq._, 215.

Sec. 10. _The Samoan Belief concerning the Human Soul: Funeral Customs_

Whether the Samoans practised the worship of the dead in a developed
form or not, they certainly possessed the elements out of which the
worship might under favourable circumstances be evolved. These elements
are a belief in the survival of the human soul after death, and a fear
of disembodied spirits or ghosts.

The Samoans believed that every man is animated by a soul, which departs
from the body temporarily in faints and dreams and permanently at death.
The soul of the dreamer, they thought, really visited the places which
he saw in his dream. At death it departed to the subterranean world of
the dead which the Samoans called Pulotu, a name which clearly differs
only dialectically from the Tongan Bolotoo or Bulotu. Some people
professed to see the parting soul when it had quitted its mortal body
and was about to take flight to the nether region. It was always of the
same shape as the body. Such apparitions at the moment of death were
much dreaded, and people tried to drive them away by shouting and firing
guns. The word for soul is _anganga_, which is a reduplicated form of
_anga_, a verb meaning "to go" or "to come." Thus apparently the Samoans
did not, like many people, identify the soul with the shadow; for in
Samoan the word for shadow is _ata_.[149]

[149] G. Turner, _Samoa_, pp. 8, 16; J. B. Stair, _Old
Samoa_, p. 220; G. Brown, _Melanesians and Polynesians_, pp. 218
_sq._; E. Tregear, _Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary_, p.
26, _s.v._ "Ata."

However, they seem to have in a dim way associated a man's soul with his
shadow. This appears from a remarkable custom which they observed in the
case of the unburied dead. The Samoans were much concerned for the lot
of these unfortunates and stood in great dread of their ghosts. They
believed that the spirits of those who had not received the rites of
burial wandered about wretched and forlorn and haunted their rela