In many cases the mourning of savages, instead of being an expression
of affection and grief, appears to be simply a mode of gratifying
their love of ceremonial and excitement. That is, they mourn for
entertainment--I had almost said for fun; and it is easy to see too,
that vanity and superstition play their rôle here as in their
"ornamenting" and everything else they do. By the Abipones "women are
appointed to go forward on swift steeds to dig the grave, and _honor_
the funeral with lamentations." (Dobrizhoffer II., 267.) During the
ceremony of making a skeleton of a body the Patagonians, as Falkner
informs us (119), indulge in singing in a mournful tone of voice, and
striking the ground, to _frighten away_ the Valichus or Evil Beings.
Some of the Indians also visit the relatives of the dead, indulging in
antics which show that the whole thing is done for effect and pastime.
"During this visit of condolence," Falkner continues,
"they cry, howl, and sing, in the most dismal manner;
straining out tears, and pricking their arms and thighs with
sharp thorns, to make them bleed. For this _show of grief_
they are _paid_ with glass beads," etc.
The Rev. W. Ellis writes that the Tahitians, when someone had died,
"not only wailed in the loudest and most affecting tone, but tore
their hair, rent their garments, and cut themselves with shark's teeth
or knives in a most shocking manner." That this was less an expression
of genuine grief than a result of the barbarous love of excitement,
follows from what he adds: that in a milder form, this loud wailing
and cutting with shark's teeth was "an expression of joy as well as of
grief." (_Pol. Res_., I., 527.) The same writer relates in his book on
Hawaii (148) that when a chief or king died on that island,
"the people ran to and fro without their clothes,
appearing and acting more like demons than human
beings; every vice was practised and almost every
species of crime perpetrated."
J.T. Irving tells a characteristic story (226-27) of an Indian girl
whom he found one day lying on a grave singing a song "so despairing
that it seemed to well out from a broken heart." A half-breed friend,
who thoroughly understood the native customs, marred his illusion by
informing him that he had heard the girl say to her mother that as she
had nothing else to do, she believed she would go and take a bawl over
her brother's grave. The brother had been dead five years!
The whole question of aboriginal mourning is patly summed up in a
witty remark made by James Adair more than a century ago (1775). He
has seen Choctaw mourners, he declares (187), "pour out tears like
fountains of water; but after thus tiring themselves they might with
perfect propriety have asked themselves, '_ And who is dead?_'"