When all is ready it
is transfixed with a wooden spear, and the chief cuts off its head
with a wooden sword. Then pigs and fowls are slaughtered and cooked,
and eaten with the rice from the rice-crocodile, the chiefs eating
the head and the common people the body. The chief of these people
could give us no explanation of the meaning of this ceremony; he
merely says they do it because it is custom.
One community of Klemantans, the Lelak people, lived recently on the
banks of a lake much infested with crocodiles. Their chief had the
reputation of being able to induce them to leave the lake. To achieve
this he would stand in his boat waving a bundle of charms, which
included among other things teeth of the real tiger and boars' tusks,
and then address the crocodiles politely in their own language. He
would then allow his boat to float out of the lake into the river,
and the crocodiles would follow him and pass on down the river.
Many, probably all, Klemantans put up wooden images of the crocodile
before their houses, and many of them carve the prow of their
war-canoes into the form of a crocodile's head with gaping jaw.
Some of the Muruts make an effigy of the crocodile from clay for use
on the celebration of a successful expedition.
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