“Two unchiselled ‘smooth stones of the stream’ were kept in a temple at one of the villages, and guarded with great care. No stranger or over-curious person was allowed to go near the place, under penalty of a beating from the custodians of these gods. They represented good and not malicious death-causing gods. The one made the yams, breadfruit, and cocoanuts, and the other sent fish to the nets. “Another stone was carefully housed in another village as the representative of a rain-making god. When there was overmuch rain, the stone was laid by the fire and kept heated till fine weather set in.” Further instances (if fairly reported) occur elsewhere. “Among the lower races of America,” says Dr. Tylor, summarising Schoolcraft, “the Dakotahs would pick up a round boulder, paint it, and then, addressing it as grandfather, make offerings to it, and pray it to deliver them from danger.” But here the very fact that the stone is worshipped and treated as an ancestor shows how derivative is the deification--how dependent upon the prior association of such stones with the tomb of a forefather and its indwelling spirit. Just in the same way we know there are countries where a grave is more generally marked, not by a stone, but by a wooden stake; and in these countries, as for instance among the Samoyedes of Siberia, sticks, not stones, are the most common objects of reverence. (Thus, again, stick-worship is found “among the Damaras of South Africa, whose ancestors are represented at the sacrificial feasts by stakes cut from trees or bushes consecrated to them, to which stakes the meat is first {101}offered.”) But here, too, we see the clear affiliation upon ancestor-worship; and indeed, wherever we find the common worship of “stocks and stones,” all the analogies lead us to believe the stocks and stones either actually mark the graves of ancestors or else are accepted as their representatives and embodiments.