Finally croton leaves, tied in sheaves, are arranged round the posts below the skulls and bones, so as to decorate the posts down to the ground.
One other specially important matter must here be mentioned. There will probably be in or by the edge of the village enclosure a high box-shaped wooden burial platform, [71] supported on poles, and containing the skull and all the bones of a chief, these platforms and a special sort of tree being, as will be explained later on, the only places where they and their families and important personages are originally buried. If so, the people add to the bones on this platform such of the other skulls and special arm and leg bones, collected as above mentioned, as are not required for decorating the posts. If, as is most improbable, there is no such burial platform, then they erect one, and upon it place all the available skulls and special bones not required for the posts.
These various preparations bring us to the evening before the day of the feast, upon which evening the women, married and unmarried, of the community, whose families have supplied pigs for the feast, dance together in full dancing decorations in the village enclosure, beginning at about sundown, and, if weather permits, dancing all through the night. There is no ceremony connected with this dancing.
The next day is the feast day. The guests are in the special guest houses outside the village, where they are dressing for the dance. They have probably arrived the day before, in which case they may have come into the village to watch the women dancing in the evening; but they are not regarded as having formally arrived. These guests include married and unmarried men, women and children, nobody of the invited community being left behind, except old men and women who cannot walk. The women have brought with them their carrying bags, in which they carry all their men's and their own goods (_e.g._, knives, feathers, ornaments, etc.), including not only the things used for the ceremony, but all their other portable property, which they do not wish to expose to risk of theft by leaving at home.
They have also brought special ornamental bags to be used in the dance as mentioned below.