| caption: |
tribute; chiefs; marriage; house decoration; human heads |
| text: |
Amongst them one village holds several others in subjection, exacting from them tribute of cloth, &c., and so well supplied have some of them been that they boast their women never make cloth. In addition to this, should their services be required by the dominant village, they supply contingents for any fight. They have their hereditary village chief, he has no great influence, but receives a leg of every animal killed for a feast, with the first of the wine; and one day in the season, if he asks it, the village assists him in his cultivation. In their customs, (68) rejoicings and festivals, they are similar to the Koupooees, but whilst like them and all the other tribes they pay for their wives, they choose them for themselves, refusing in such matters to be guided by others. When the eldest son has brought home his wife, it is the signal for his father and mother, and the other members of the family, to quit for a new home, where they live until the marriage of the second son, when they again have to move. Their houses they construct entirely of fir, walling them and roofing them with boards of that wood. Amongst all the tribes it is customary to hang up in their houses, as ornaments, the heads of all animals, even of the fish, they may have killed; this the Loohoopas also do, but a house is, in their opinion, bare which has not hanging in it a festoon of human heads. |
