after midnight, while all the people in the house were watching, they gave so great a shout and howl that I, and those who were with me, jumped out of bed and seized our arms, not being able to imagine what was the matter. After a short space a deep silence followed, and the mourners then began to laugh and drink; except the twelve watchers who never quitted the dead night or day. When they were obliged to go out for a moment, their faces and bodies were entirely covered. I was present, as I have said, at the obsequies of a chief called Pocorosa, in the province of Cueva, and, wishing to know why they did these things, I was told that it was the custom, and that, in those hours when they shouted, they were repeating the history of the chief. On the anniversary of the day that he died, in the following year, they celebrate a festival in his honour, bringing all the food he used to eat, and the arms with which he fought, and models of the canoes in which he navigated, made with small sticks, into the presence of the body. They then take the body into a court which has been cleaned out, and burn it to ashes, saying that the smoke goes to the place where the dead man's soul is.[1] On asking them where that was, they replied that they only knew that it was in heaven, and that the smoke went there. And they continue to celebrate these anniversaries for the dead, if he was a person who could afford it, for much is spent on these occasions in eating and drinking. They have no ceremony or worship in this land, but they live by the laws of nature, keeping the laws not to kill, not to steal, and not to take another's wife. They know not what evidence is, but they hold it to be a very evil thing to lie. They also refrain from taking their father's principal wives, their sisters, or daughters for wives, because they hold it to be wrong.
In these provinces the weapons of the Indians are darts
- ↑ Herrera quotes this account of the obsequies of the cacique Pocorosa, from Andagoya. Dec. ii, lib. i, cap. 3
