Of those things which the Abipones do to testify their grief, according to the customs established by their ancestors, some tend to obliterate the memory of the defunct, others to perpetuate it. All the utensils belonging to the lately deceased are burnt on a pile. Besides the horses killed at the tomb, they slay his small cattle if he have any. The house which he inhabited they pull entirely to pieces. His widow, children, and the rest of his family remove elsewhere; and having no house of their own, reside for a time in that of some other person, or lodge miserably under mats. They had rather endure the injuries of the weather, than, contrary to the laws of their countrymen, inhabit a commodious house that has been saddened by the death of the dear master of it. To utter the name of a lately deceased person is reckoned a nefarious offence amongst the Abipones; if, however occasion requires that mention should be made of that person, they say, "The man that does not now exist," making use of a paraphrase. But if the name of the defunct be derived from an appellative noun, the word is abolished by proclamation, and a new one substituted. It is the prerogative of the old women to invent these new names, which are quickly divulgated amongst the widely-scattered hordes of the Abipones, and are so firmly imprinted on their minds, that no one individual is ever heard to utter a proscribed word. All the friends and relations of the deceased change the names they formerly bore. In the colony of the Rosary, the wife of the chief Cacique dying of the small-pox, her husband changed his name of Revachigi to that of Oahari. His mother and brother and captive, as well as all the brothers of the deceased, had new names given them with various ceremonies. The old mother of the Cacique was extremely fond of a lank, scraggy dog, unworthy of the very air it breathed. When this change of names was made, I asked the old woman what name would be given her dog, to show them that we held their absurd rites in ridicule, though unable at that time to prevent them. On the death of a Cacique, all the men under his authority shave their long hair as a sign of grief. Widows also have their hair shaven, and wear a kind of cloak made of the caraquatà, stained black and red, which covers the head like a hood, and flows down from the shoulders to the breast. Widows use this cloak all their lives, unless a new marriage frees them from the unpleasant law of perpetual mourning. An Abiponian husband when he loses his wife shaves his hair in like manner, and wears a small woollen cap, which he publicly receives from the hands of an old woman, the priestess of the ceremonies, whilst the other women are engaged in lamenting, and the men in drinking together, and which he throws off when his hair begins to grow.