If an Indian dies the place becomes accursed. The camp is immediately removed to a fresh locality. When the dead man or woman is buried, certain ceremonies are observed about the grave, evidently with a view to enabling the departed to start in another life with an adequate outfit. Horses and dogs are slaughtered, so that he may have the means to pursue and kill the guanaco in the land of ghosts. Food and dead game are also placed in the grave to supply his needs at the outset of the new existence. Should the dead happen to be a child or a person of tender years, fillies and colts are slaughtered at the burial.
In former times, and in fact until quite recent years, it used to be the custom to place beside the corpse the silver-mounted horse-gear of the dead man, and to close the grave upon it. In a land where life depends not infrequently upon the strength of your raw-hide head-stall, for instance, the value of sound gear is properly appreciated; therefore this particular precaution for the welfare of the dead shows a very practical solicitude on the part of the survivors. To-day the Tehuelches still bury these possessions in the grave, but the custom is only continued with a reservation. Instead of leaving the valuable gear under the earth for all time, they now at the end of a twelvemonth dig it up again. How they reconcile this economical arrangement with the comfort of their lost friend I do not know, but it may be suggested that they imagine the inhabitant of another world has had full time in the course of a year to make suitable new gear for himself.
The religion of the Indians is interesting. It consists, of course, in the old simple beliefs in good spirits and devils, but chiefly devils, which, with variations dependent on climate and physical environment, represent all over the world the spiritual creeds of uncivilised races. The dominant Spirit of Evil, as feared by the Tehuelches, is called the Gualicho. And he abides as an ever-present terror behind their strange, free, and superstitious lives. They spend no small portion of their time in either fleeing from his wrath or in propitiating it. You may wake in the dawn to see a band of Indians suddenly rise and leap upon their horses, and gallop away across the pampa, howling and gesticulating. They are merely scaring the Gualicho away from their tents back to his haunts in the Cordillera--the wild and unpenetrated mountains, where he and his subordinate demons groan in chosen spots the long nights through.