(M90) Among the Shuswap of British Columbia widows and widowers in mourning are secluded and forbidden to touch their own head or body; the cups and cooking-vessels which they use may be used by no one else. They must build a sweat-house beside a creek, sweat there all night and bathe regularly, after which they must rub their bodies with branches of spruce. The branches may not be used more than once, and when they have served their purpose they are stuck into the ground all round the hut. No hunter would come near such mourners, for their presence is unlucky. If their shadow were to fall on any one, he would be taken ill at once. They employ thorn bushes for bed and pillow, in order to keep away the ghost of the deceased; and thorn bushes are also laid all around their beds.(510) This last precaution shews clearly what the spiritual danger is which leads to the exclusion of such persons from ordinary society; it is simply a fear of the ghost who is supposed to be hovering near them. Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia the persons who handled a corpse and dug the grave were secluded for four days. They fasted until the body was buried, after which they were given food apart from the other people. They would not touch the food with their hands, but must put it into their mouths with sharp-pointed sticks. They ate off a small mat, and drank out of birch-bark cups, which, together with the mat, were thrown away at the end of the four days. The first four mouthfuls of food, as well as of water, had to be spit into the fire. During their seclusion they bathed in a stream and might not sleep with their wives. Widows and widowers were obliged to observe rules of a similar kind. Immediately after the death they went out and passed through a patch of rose-bushes four times, probably in order to rid themselves of the ghost, who might be supposed to stick on a thorn. For a year they had to sleep on a bed of fir-boughs, on which sticks of rose-bushes were laid; many wore twigs of rose-bush and juniper in a piece of buckskin on their persons. The first four days they might not touch their food, but ate with sharp-pointed sticks and spat out the first four mouthfuls of each meal, and the first four of water, into the fire. A widower might not fish at another man’s fishing-place or with another man’s net; if he did, it would make the place and the net useless for the season. If he transplanted a trout into another lake, before releasing it he blew on the head of the fish, and after chewing deer-fat, he spat some of the grease on its head in order to remove the baneful effect of his touch. Then he let the trout go, bidding it farewell, and asking it to propagate its kind in plenty. Any grass or branches that a widow or widower sat or lay down on withered up. If a widow should break sticks or boughs, her hands or arms would also break. She might not pick berries for a year, else the whole crop of berries would fall off the bushes or wither up.