marriage. They wanted him to kill you. All your kin are women. [They
say this in order to deceive Aliguyen into avenging himself.] They
can't avenge you. You will have to avenge yourself! There is _ordén_
[law]; no one can kill them but you! Take them all!

"This calling on Aliguyen's soul never ceased. When an old woman got
hoarse, another took her place. As the procession came to the house
it filed past Aliguyen and its leaders stopped and shouted words to
the same effect. The key-note of the whole ceremony was vengeance. It
is true that both persons who were involved in killing Aliguyen were
themselves killed, but the people of a _ranchería_ regard themselves
as being about the only real people in the world and hold that three,
four, or five men of another _ranchería_ are not equal to one of
theirs.

"Nagukaran being the _ranchería_ that speared and nearly killed my
predecessor, Mr.----, I explained my presence to the people there by
saying that the soldier, being an agent of our Government, was in a
way a relative of mine. The explanation was a perfectly natural one
to the people, and they treated me with the greatest courtesy and
helped me to see whatever was to be seen.

"Toward noon they told me that they were going to perform the feast
which looked towards securing vengeance for Aliguyen's death. They went
to where the people had built a shed to protect them from the sun's
fierce rays on a little hillock some distance from any house. Two
pigs were provided there, one being very small. Only the old men
were permitted to gather around the pigs and the rice-wine and the
other appurtenances of the feast. The feast began by a prayer to the
ancestors, followed by an invocation to the various deities. The most