An exchange of names, as if in exchange of personalities, in connection with a covenant of friendship, is a custom in widely diverse countries; and this custom seems to have grown out of the idea of an inter-union of natures by an inter-union of blood; even if it be not actually an accompaniment of that rite in every instance. It is common in the Society Islands,[744] as an element in the adoption of a “tayo,” or a personal friend and companion (See page 56, _supra_). It is to be found in various South Sea islands, and on the American continent. Among the Araucanians, of South America, the custom of making brothers, or brother-friends, is called _Lacu_. It includes the killing of a lamb and dividing it--“cutting” it--between the two covenanting parties; and each party must eat his half of the lamb--either by himself or by such assistance as he chooses to call in. None of it must be left uneaten. Gifts also pass between the parties; and the two friends exchange names. “The giving [the exchanging] of a name [with this people] establishes between the namesakes a species of relationship which is considered almost as sacred as that of blood, and obliges them to render to each other certain services, and that consideration which naturally belongs to relatives.”[745] It is related of Tolo, a chief of the Shastika Indians, on the Pacific coast, that when he made a treaty with Col. McKee, an American soldier, in 1852, for the cession of certain tribal rights, he was anxious for some ceremony of brotherhood, that should give binding sacredness to the mutual covenant. After some parleying, he proposed the formal exchange of names, and this was agreed to. Thenceforward he desired to be known as “McKee.” The American colonel was now “Tolo.” But after a while the Indian found that, as in too many other instances, the terms of the treaty were not adhered to by the authorities making it. Then he discarded his new name, “McKee,” and refused to resume his former name, “Tolo.” He would not answer to either, and to the day of his death he insisted that his name, his identity, was “lost.”[746]--There is a profound sentiment underneath such a course, and such a custom, as that. So fully is the identity of one’s name and one’s life recognized by primitive peoples, that to call on the name of a dead person is generally supposed to summon the spirit of that person to the caller’s service. Hence, among the American Indians, if one calls the dead by name, he must answer to the dead man’s goel. He must surrender his own blood, or pay blood-money, in restitution of the life--of the dead--taken by him. (_First An. Rep. of Bureau of Ethnol._, p. 200.)