Sometimes the dead are sent by sorcerers to harm people and make them ill, but generally they come of their own accord.  They enter the house at night and drink the tesvino and eat the food prepared for a feast, and what they cannot eat they spoil.  To protect the beer against such mischief the people place bows and arrows next the jars, and cover the vessels with sprigs of the odorous artemisia.  The dead will also kill cattle and sheep, and spit and blow in the faces of the people, to make them ill, and possibly cause their death.  Sometimes the dead are viewed as spirits, and the shaman sees them flying through the air, like birds.  If the spirit of a dead person takes up his abode in a house, the owner of the dwelling will feel a choking sensation, dry up, and die, unless the shaman gives to the dead plenty of tesvino, and drives him away with incantations.

The dead are supposed to be about at night; therefore the Tarahumares do not like to travel after dark, for fear of meeting the dead, who whistle when they pass the living.  Only shamans can travel at night, although sometimes even they have to fight with the dead, who come running out of the caves on all fours.  In the daytime the Tarahumares are not afraid of the dead, though even then they do not dare to visit burial-places, modern or ancient.  I found it difficult to get Indians to carry bones of skeletons excavated from ancient burial-caves, and even the Mexicans would not allow their animals to carry burdens of that kind, for fear that the mules would get tired, that is to say, play out and die.

When a person dies, his eyes are closed, his hands crossed over his breast, and the relatives talk to him one by one, and bid him good-bye.  The weeping widow tells her husband that, now that he has gone and does not want to stay with her any longer, he must not come back to frighten her or his sons or daughters or anyone else.  She implores him not to carry any of them off, or do any mischief, but to leave them all alone.

A mother says to her dead infant:  “Now go away!  Don’t come back any more, now that you are dead.  Don’t come at night to nurse at my breast.  Go away, and do not come back!” And the father says to the child:  “Don’t come back to ask me to hold your hand, or to do things for you.  I shall not know you any more.  Don’t come walking around here, but stay away.”

The body is wrapped in a blanket almost before it is cold, to be buried later, but food is at once placed around it, and ashes are liberally strewn over and around the corpse, to enable the relatives to discover, by the tracks, into what kind of animal the dead has changed.  At night some fox or coyote, polecat or rat, is sure to be attracted by the smell of the food; but the people believe that it was the departed who returned in the form of the animal to get his food.  A shaman, without even looking at the tracks, may be able to tell what animal shape the dead assumes.