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SWANTON] CHOCTAW SOCIAL AND CEEEMOISriAL. LIFE 217
animals it imitates, in this way. When a fox barks, or an owl screeches,
another fox or owl replies. But when the shilnmbish imitates the sound of
either animal, no response is given.
The knowledge of this distinction between the outside and inside shadow,
appears in a measure lost by the present generation. And I hear none but
aged men speak of the land of ghosts, or of the departed ghost going to this
land after death. The present generation seem to suppose that the shilup
wanders about some time, and then disappears. The Choctaws have many
superstitious fears w^ith respect to ghosts. To see a ghost, is regarded as a
certain precursor of death. When a sick person sees one, he despairs at once
of recovery, and his doctor ceases to make any further effort for his restora-
tion. Moreover it is customary for the doctor, when he sees his patient will
die, in order to save his own reputation to give out that he has seen a ghost,
and therefore his recovery is impossible. To dream of seeing a ghost is also
ominous of sickness and deatli, and many pine away with tormenting anxiety,
in the fearful looking for death as the inevitable consequence of such dreams.
The nightmare is supposed to be occasioned by some restless shilup having come
for the person subject to it, and it is believed that the only way to give relief,
is to frighten him away by some kind of incantation.'
In the main this is undoiibteclly a correct statement of ancient
Choctaw pneumatology, and it is confirmed in certain of its details
by other writers. The association of the ghost with foxes makes
clear the following incident in the Choctaw expedition of the French
officer De Lusser in the year 1730. He says
At midnight [Jan. 31] I was awakened by three or four gunshots that were
fired near me. I asked what was the matter. The chief [of the Yowanis]
replied that it was on account of the barking of foxes which was a bad omen
that that usually happened when one of the band was going to die, and that it
was well to fire guns in order to drive them away.*
Simpson Tubby said regarding this that they used to be afraid of
the howling of a fox until they learned that it was merely caused by
the fact that the male and female had gotten separated and they
were howling for each other.
The anonymous French Eelation informs us that food and drink,
a change of shoes, a gun, powder, and balls were placed with a corpse
because
" They say that ... he is going to another country, and it is right that he
have everything he needs in his journey. They believe that the warriors go
to make war in the other world, and that everyone there performs the same
acts that he did in this."* "They .say that . . . ghosts (or apparitions) are of
people who are dead and have not been given certain effects on dying of which
they had need in the other world—as those who are drowned or killed in war
and which they come back to seek." "
^ The Missionary Herald, 1828, pp. 182-183. Byington defines shilombish as " the
shadow of a creature, an animal, or a man ; the soul, the spirit, a ghost, a shade, a
spectre, a sprite." He defines shilup as " a ghost, a spirit, a sprite, an apparition, a
fantasm, the painting or picture of a man, manes, a phantom, a shade, a spectre."
* Ms. in French Archives.
•Appendix, p. 251 ; Mem. Am. Anthrop. Assn., vol. t. No. 2, pp. 64-65.
" Appendix, p. 255 ; Mem. Am. Anthrop. Assn., v., No. 2, p. 69.
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