Then in the morning the news spread about that the old chief was dead; and the women who had attended him in his sickness stood around the hut moaning and wailing, and went crying up and down the village. And all the people mourned for him. Then after two days they carried his body to the top of a hill beyond the village, and built a funeral pyre of faggots and burned his body in the fire. This was done according to the rule of the Medicine Men, of whom there were three present to take part in the funeral. They gathered the ashes together and put them into an urn and then carried the urn to a place that they had chosen. In the meantime the people had built up another great fire; and they brought an ox, and killed it and roasted it in the fire, and made a great feast on the hill-top beside the fire, and all the people sat down and feasted at the funeral feast of the old chief. Then the Medicine Men bade the people approach to lay the gifts in the grave. They brought food from the feast and set it in little vessels beside the urn, because they believed that the chief’s spirit would need food for refreshment in the spirit world; and they brought his spear and his axe and his bow and arrows and his shield, and laid them in the grave; and they brought his favourite dog and killed it there, and laid its body beside the urn, so that it might attend its master in the world of spirits. Then when this was done, the Medicine Men made the people bring stones to raise a cairn over the urn. First they laid large flat stones, building them like a little chamber about the urn; then they laid six large blocks in a circle all round, and set others within the circle and piled them up into a great heap. These stones they brought from the river bed in the valley and carried them up across the hill-side to build the cairn. The building of the cairn was a work of several days; and every day until the work was finished, the women mourned and wailed in the village at sunset.
At last, on the day that the cairn was finished, the men of the village met together in council to choose one to be chief in the place of Caerig. Then Arsan, the old man, stood up and said:
“Garff is the man among us who is fittest to be our chief; for he is an able man and skilful, whether for hunting or for battle; and he is a man wise in council and the master of many cattle. Shall we not do well to choose him to be our chief?”