a girl at puberty has to remain in seclusion for some time. She lies
covered up with branches or other things in a corner of the hut, seeing no
one and speaking to no one, and during this time she may eat neither flesh
nor fish. Meantime a man beats a drum in front of the house.(136)
Similarly among the Tobas, another Indian tribe of the same region, when a
chief’s daughter has just attained to womanhood, she is shut up for two or
three days in the house, all the men of the tribe scour the country to
bring in game and fish for a feast, and a Mataco Indian is engaged to
drum, sing, and dance in front of the house without cessation, day and
night, till the festival is over. As the merrymaking lasts for two or
three weeks, the exhaustion of the musician at the end of it may be
readily conceived. Meat and drink are supplied to him on the spot where he
pays his laborious court to the Muses. The proceedings wind up with a
saturnalia and a drunken debauch.(137) Among the Yaguas, an Indian tribe
of the Upper Amazon, a girl at puberty is shut up for three months in a
lonely hut in the forest, where her mother brings her food daily.(138)
When a girl of the Peguenches tribe perceives in herself the first signs
of womanhood, she is secluded by her mother in a corner of the hut
screened off with blankets, and is warned not to lift up her eyes on any
man. Next day, very early in the morning and again after sunset, she is
taken out by two women and made to run till she is tired; in the interval
she is again secluded in her corner. On the following day she lays three
packets of wool beside the path near the house to signify that she is now
a woman.(139) Among the Passes, Mauhes, and other tribes of Brazil the
young woman in similar circumstances is hung in her hammock from the roof
and has to fast there for a month or as long as she can hold out.(140) One
of the early settlers in Brazil, about the middle of the sixteenth
century, has described the severe ordeal which damsels at puberty had to
undergo among the Indians on the south-east coast of that country, near
what is now Rio de Janeiro. When a girl had reached this critical period
of life, her hair was burned or shaved off close to the head. Then she was
placed on a flat stone and cut with the tooth of an animal from the
shoulders all down the back, till she ran with blood. Next the ashes of a
wild gourd were rubbed into the wounds; the girl was bound hand and foot,
and hung in a hammock, being enveloped in it so closely that no one could
see her. Here she had to stay for three days without eating or drinking.
When the three days were over, she stepped out of the hammock upon the
flat stone, for her feet might not touch the ground. If she had a call of
nature, a female relation took the girl on her back and carried her out,
taking with her a live coal to prevent evil influences from entering the
girl’s body. Being replaced in her hammock, she was now allowed to get
some flour, boiled roots, and water, but might not taste salt or flesh.
Thus she continued to the end of the first monthly period, at the expiry
of which she was gashed on the breast and belly as well as all down the
back. During the second month she still stayed in her hammock, but her
rule of abstinence was less rigid, and she was allowed to spin. The third
month she was blackened with a certain pigment and began to go about as
usual.(141)
(M48) Amongst the Macusis of British Guiana, when a girl shews the first
signs of puberty, she is hung in a hammock at the highest point of the
hut. For the first few days she may not leave the hammock by day, but at
night she must come down, light a fire, and spend the night beside it,
else she would break out in sores on her neck, throat, and other parts of
her body. So long as the symptoms are at their height, she must fast
rigorously. When they have abated, she may come down and take up her abode
in a little compartment that is made for her in the darkest corner of the
hut. In the morning she may cook her food, but it must be at a separate
fire and in a vessel of her own. After about ten days the magician comes
and undoes the spell by muttering charms and breathing on her and on the
more valuable of the things with which she has come in contact. The pots
and drinking-vessels which she used are broken and the fragments buried.
After her first bath, the girl must submit to be beaten by her mother with
thin rods without uttering a cry. At the end of the second period she is
again beaten, but not afterwards. She is now “clean,” and can mix again
with people.(142) Other Indians of Guiana, after keeping the girl in her
hammock at the top of the hut for a month, expose her to certain large
ants, whose bite is very painful.(143) Sometimes, in addition to being
stung with ants, the sufferer has to fast day and night so long as she
remains slung up on high in her hammock, so that when she comes down she
is reduced to a skeleton. The intention of stinging her with ants is said
to be to make her strong to bear the burden of maternity.(144) Amongst the
Uaupes of Brazil a girl at puberty is secluded in the house for a month,
and allowed only a small quantity of bread and water. Then she is taken
out into the midst of her relations and friends, each of whom gives her
four or five blows with pieces of _sipo_ (an elastic climber), till she
falls senseless or dead. If she recovers, the operation is repeated four
times at intervals of six hours, and it is considered an offence to the
parents not to strike hard. Meantime, pots of meats and fish have been
made ready; the _sipos_ are dipped into them and then given to the girl to
lick, who is now considered a marriageable woman.(145)
(M49) The custom of stinging the girl at such times with ants or beating
her with rods is intended, we may be sure, not as a punishment or a test
of endurance, but as a purification, the object being to drive away the
malignant influences with which a girl in this condition is believed to be
beset and enveloped. Examples of purification, by beating, by incisions in
the flesh, and by stinging with ants, have already come before us.(146) In
some Indian tribes of Brazil and Guiana young men do not rank as warriors
and may not marry till they have passed through a terrible ordeal, which
consists in being stung by swarms of venomous ants whose bite is like
fire. Thus among the Mauhes on the Tapajos river, a southern tributary of
the Amazon, boys of eight to ten years are obliged to thrust their arms
into sleeves stuffed with great ferocious ants, which the Indians call
_tocandeira_ (_Cryptocerus atratus_, F.). When the young victim shrieks
with pain, an excited mob of men dances round him, shouting and
encouraging him till he falls exhausted to the ground. He is then
committed to the care of old women, who treat his fearfully swollen arms
with fresh juice of the manioc; and on his recovery he has to shew his
strength and skill in bending a bow. This cruel ordeal is commonly
repeated again and again, till the lad has reached his fourteenth year and
can bear the agony without betraying any sign of emotion. Then he is a man
and can marry. A lad’s age is reckoned by the number of times he has
passed through the ordeal.(147) An eye-witness has described how a young
Mauhe hero bore the torture with an endurance more than Spartan, dancing
and singing, with his arms cased in the terrible mittens, before every
cabin of the great common house, till pallid, staggering, and with
chattering teeth he triumphantly laid the gloves before the old chief and
received the congratulations of the men and the caresses of the women;
then breaking away from his friends and admirers he threw himself into the
river and remained in its cool soothing water till nightfall.(148)
Similarly among the Ticunas of the Upper Amazon, on the border of Peru,
the young man who would take his place among the warriors must plunge his
arm into a sort of basket full of venomous ants and keep it there for
several minutes without uttering a cry. He generally falls backwards and
sometimes succumbs to the fever which ensues; hence as soon as the ordeal
is over the women are prodigal of their attentions to him, and rub the
swollen arm with a particular kind of herb.(149) Ordeals of this sort
appear to be in vogue among the Indians of the Rio Negro as well as of the
Amazon.(150) Among the Rucuyennes, a tribe of Indians in the north of
Brazil, on the borders of Guiana, young men who are candidates for
marriage must submit to be stung all over their persons not only with ants
but with wasps, which are applied to their naked bodies in curious
instruments of trellis-work shaped like fantastic quadrupeds or birds. The
patient invariably falls down in a swoon and is carried like dead to his
hammock, where he is tightly lashed with cords. As they come to
themselves, they writhe in agony, so that their hammocks rock violently to
and fro, causing the hut to shake as if it were about to collapse. This
dreadful ordeal is called by the Indians a _maraké_.(151)
(M50) The same ordeal, under the same name, is also practised by the
Wayanas, an Indian tribe of French Guiana, but with them, we are told, it
is no longer deemed an indispensable preliminary to marriage; “it is
rather a sort of national medicine administered chiefly to the youth of
both sexes.” Applied to men, the _maraké_, as it is called, “sharpens
them, prevents them from being heavy and lazy, makes them active, brisk,
industrious, imparts strength, and helps them to shoot well with the bow;
without it the Indians would always be slack and rather sickly, would
always have a little fever, and would lie perpetually in their hammocks.
As for the women, the _maraké_ keeps them from going to sleep, renders
them active, alert, brisk, gives them strength and a liking for work,
makes them good housekeepers, good workers at the stockade, good makers of
_cachiri_. Every one undergoes the _maraké_ at least twice in his life,
sometimes thrice, and oftener if he likes. It may be had from the age of
about eight years and upward, and no one thinks it odd that a man of forty
should voluntarily submit to it.”(152) Similarly the Indians of St. Juan
Capistrano in California used to be branded on some part of their bodies,
generally on the right arm, but sometimes on the leg also, not as a proof
of manly fortitude, but because they believed that the custom “added
greater strength to the nerves, and gave a better pulse for the management
of the bow.” Afterwards “they were whipped with nettles, and covered with
ants, that they might become robust, and the infliction was always
performed in summer, during the months of July and August, when the nettle
was in its most fiery state. They gathered small bunches, which they
fastened together, and the poor deluded Indian was chastised, by
inflicting blows with them upon his naked limbs, until unable to walk; and
then he was carried to the nest of the nearest and most furious species of
ants, and laid down among them, while some of his friends, with sticks,
kept annoying the insects to make them still more violent. What torments
did they not undergo! What pain! What hellish inflictions! Yet their faith
gave them power to endure all without a murmur, and they remained as if
dead. Having undergone these dreadful ordeals, they were considered as
invulnerable, and believed that the arrows of their enemies could no
longer harm them.”(153) Among the Alur, a tribe inhabiting the
south-western region of the upper Nile, to bury a man in an ant-hill and
leave him there for a while is the regular treatment for insanity.(154)
(M51) In like manner it is probable that beating or scourging as a
religious or ceremonial rite was originally a mode of purification. It was
meant to wipe off and drive away a dangerous contagion, whether
personified as demoniacal or not, which was supposed to be adhering
physically, though invisibly, to the body of the sufferer.(155) The pain
inflicted on the person beaten was no more the object of the beating than
it is of a surgical operation with us; it was a necessary accident, that
was all. In later times such customs were interpreted otherwise, and the
pain, from being an accident, became the prime object of the ceremony,
which was now regarded either as a test of endurance imposed upon persons
at critical epochs of life, or as a mortification of the flesh well
pleasing to the god. But asceticism, under any shape or form, is never
primitive. The savage, it is true, in certain circumstances will
voluntarily subject himself to pains and privations which appear to us
wholly needless; but he never acts thus unless he believes that some solid
temporal advantage is to be gained by so doing. Pain for the sake of pain,
whether as a moral discipline in this life or as a means of winning a
glorious immortality hereafter, is not an object which he sets himself
deliberately to pursue.
(M52) If this view is correct, we can understand why so many Indian tribes
of South America compel the youth of both sexes to submit to these painful
and sometimes fatal ordeals. They imagine that in this way they rid the
young folk of certain evils inherent in youth, especially at the critical
age of puberty; and when they picture to themselves the evils in a
personal form as dangerous spirits or demons, the ceremony of their
expulsion may in the strict sense be termed an exorcism. This certainly
appears to be the interpretation which the Banivas of the Orinoco put upon
the cruel scourgings which they inflict on girls at puberty. At her first
menstruation a Baniva girl must pass several days and nights in her
hammock, almost motionless and getting nothing to eat and drink but water
and a little manioc. While she lies there, the suitors for her hand apply
to her father, and he who can afford to give most for her or can prove
himself the best man, is promised the damsel in marriage. The fast over,
some old men enter the hut, bandage the girl’s eyes, cover her head with a
bonnet of which the fringes fall on her shoulders, and then lead her forth
and tie her to a post set up in an open place. The head of the post is
carved in the shape of a grotesque face. None but the old men may witness
what follows. Were a woman caught peeping and prying, it would go ill with
her; she would be marked out for the vengeance of the demon, who would
make her expiate her crime at the very next moon by madness or death.
Every participant in the ceremony comes armed with a scourge of cords or
of fish skins; some of them reinforce the virtue of the instrument by
tying little sharp stones to the end of the thongs. Then, to the dismal
and deafening notes of shell-trumpets blown by two or three
supernumeraries, the men circle round and round the post, every one
applying his scourge as he passes to the girl’s back, till it streams with
blood. At last the musicians, winding tremendous blasts on their trumpets
against the demon, advance and touch the post in which he is supposed to
be incorporate. Then the blows cease to descend; the girl is untied, often
in a fainting state, and carried away to have her wounds washed and
simples applied to them. The youngest of the executioners, or rather of
the exorcists, hastens to inform her betrothed husband of the happy issue
of the exorcism. “The spirit,” he says, “had cast thy beloved into a sleep
as deep almost as that of death. But we have rescued her from his attacks,
and laid her down in such and such a place. Go seek her.” Then going from
house to house through the village he cries to the inmates, “Come, let us
burn the demon who would have taken possession of such and such a girl,
our friend.” The bridegroom at once carries his wounded and suffering
bride to his own house; and all the people gather round the post for the
pleasure of burning it and the demon together. A great pile of firewood
has meanwhile been heaped up about it, and the women run round the pyre
cursing in shrill voices the wicked spirit who has wrought all this evil.
The men join in with hoarser cries and animate themselves for the business
in hand by deep draughts of an intoxicant which has been provided for the
occasion by the parents-in-law. Soon the bridegroom, having committed the
bride to the care of his mother, appears on the scene brandishing a
lighted torch. He addresses the demon with bitter mockery and reproaches;
informs him that the fair creature on whom he, the demon, had nefarious
designs, is now his, the bridegroom’s, blooming spouse; and shaking his
torch at the grinning head on the post, he screams out, “This is how the
victims of thy persecution take vengeance on thee!” With these words he
puts a light to the pyre. At once the drums strike up, the trumpets blare,
and men, women, and children begin to dance. In two long rows they dance,
the men on one side, the women on the other, advancing till they almost
touch and then retiring again. After that the two rows join hands, and
forming a huge circle trip it round and round the blaze, till the post
with its grotesque face is consumed in the flames and nothing of the pyre
remains but a heap of red and glowing embers. “The evil spirit has been
destroyed. Thus delivered from her persecutor, the young wife will be free
from sickness, will not die in childbed, and will bear many children to
her husband.”(156) From this account it appears that the Banivas attribute
the symptoms of puberty in girls to the wounds inflicted on them by an
amorous devil, who, however, can be not only exorcised but burnt to ashes
at the stake.
§ 6. Seclusion of Girls at Puberty in India and Cambodia.
(M53) When a Hindoo maiden reaches maturity she is kept in a dark room for
four days, and is forbidden to see the sun. She is regarded as unclean; no
one may touch her. Her diet is restricted to boiled rice, milk, sugar,
curd, and tamarind without salt. On the morning of the fifth day she goes
to a neighbouring tank, accompanied by five women whose husbands are
alive. Smeared with turmeric water, they all bathe and return home,
throwing away the mat and other things that were in the room.(157) The
Rarhi Brahmans of Bengal compel a girl at puberty to live alone, and do
not allow her to see the face of any male. For three days she remains shut
up in a dark room, and has to undergo certain penances. Fish, flesh, and
sweetmeats are forbidden her; she must live upon rice and ghee.(158) Among
the Tiyans of Malabar a girl is thought to be polluted for four days from
the beginning of her first menstruation. During this time she must keep to
the north side of the house, where she sleeps on a grass mat of a
particular kind, in a room festooned with garlands of young coco-nut
leaves. Another girl keeps her company and sleeps with her, but she may
not touch any other person, tree or plant. Further, she may not see the
sky, and woe betide her if she catches sight of a crow or a cat! Her diet
must be strictly vegetarian, without salt, tamarinds, or chillies. She is
armed against evil spirits by a knife, which is placed on the mat or
carried on her person.(159) Among the Kappiliyans of Madura and Tinnevelly
a girl at her first monthly period remains under pollution for thirteen
days, either in a corner of the house, which is screened off for her use
by her maternal uncle, or in a temporary hut, which is erected by the same
relative on the common land of the village. On the thirteenth day she
bathes in a tank, and, on entering the house, steps over a pestle and a
cake. Near the entrance some food is placed and a dog is allowed to
partake of it; but his enjoyment is marred by suffering, for while he eats
he receives a sound thrashing, and the louder he howls the better, for the
larger will be the family to which the young woman will give birth; should
there be no howls, there will be no children. The temporary hut in which
the girl passed the days of her seclusion is burnt down, and the pots
which she used are smashed to shivers.(160) Similarly among the Parivarams
of Madura, when a girl attains to puberty she is kept for sixteen days in
a hut, which is guarded at night by her relations; and when her
sequestration is over the hut is burnt down and the pots she used are
broken into very small pieces, because they think that if rain-water
gathered in any of them, the girl would be childless.(161) The Pulayars of
Travancore build a special hut in the jungle for the use of a girl at
puberty; there she remains for seven days. No one else may enter the hut,
not even her mother. Women stand a little way off and lay down food for
her. At the end of the time she is brought home, clad in a new or clean
cloth, and friends are treated to betel-nut, toddy, and arack.(162) Among
the Singhalese a girl at her first menstruation is confined to a room,
where she may neither see nor be seen by any male. After being thus
secluded for two weeks she is taken out, with her face covered, and is
bathed by women at the back of the house. Near the bathing-place are kept
branches of any milk-bearing tree, usually of the _jak_-tree. In some
cases, while the time of purification or uncleanness lasts, the maiden
stays in a separate hut, which is afterwards burnt down.(163)
(M54) In Cambodia a girl at puberty is put to bed under a mosquito
curtain, where she should stay a hundred days. Usually, however, four,
five, ten, or twenty days are thought enough; and even this, in a hot
climate and under the close meshes of the curtain, is sufficiently
trying.(164) According to another account, a Cambodian maiden at puberty
is said to “enter into the shade.” During her retirement, which, according
to the rank and position of her family, may last any time from a few days
to several years, she has to observe a number of rules, such as not to be
seen by a strange man, not to eat flesh or fish, and so on. She goes
nowhere, not even to the pagoda. But this state of seclusion is
discontinued during eclipses; at such times she goes forth and pays her
devotions to the monster who is supposed to cause eclipses by catching the
heavenly bodies between his teeth.(165) This permission to break her rule
of retirement and appear abroad during an eclipse seems to shew how
literally the injunction is interpreted which forbids maidens entering on
womanhood to look upon the sun.
§ 7. Seclusion of Girls at Puberty in Folk-tales.
(M55) A superstition so widely diffused as this might be expected to leave
traces in legends and folk-tales. And it has done so. In a Danish story we
read of a princess who was fated to be carried off by a warlock if ever
the sun shone on her before she had passed her thirtieth year; so the king
her father kept her shut up in the palace, and had all the windows on the
east, south, and west sides blocked up, lest a sunbeam should fall on his
darling child, and he should thus lose her for ever. Only at evening, when
the sun was down, might she walk for a little in the beautiful garden of
the castle. In time a prince came a-wooing, followed by a train of
gorgeous knights and squires on horses all ablaze with gold and silver.
The king said the prince might have his daughter to wife on condition that
he would not carry her away to his home till she was thirty years old but
would live with her in the castle, where the windows looked out only to
the north. The prince agreed, so married they were. The bride was only
fifteen, and fifteen more long weary years must pass before she might step
out of the gloomy donjon, breathe the fresh air, and see the sun. But she
and her gallant young bridegroom loved each other and they were happy.
Often they sat hand in hand at the window looking out to the north and
talked of what they would do when they were free. Still it was a little
dull to look out always at the same window and to see nothing but the
castle woods, and the distant hills, and the clouds drifting silently over
them. Well, one day it happened that all the people in the castle had gone
away to a neighbouring castle to witness a tournament and other gaieties,
and the two young folks were left as usual all alone at the window looking
out to the north. They sat silent for a time gazing away to the hills. It
was a grey sad day, the sky was overcast, and the weather seemed to draw
to rain. At last the prince said, “There will be no sunshine to-day. What
if we were to drive over and join the rest at the tournament?” His young
wife gladly consented, for she longed to see more of the world than those
eternal green woods and those eternal blue hills, which were all she ever
saw from the window. So the horses were put into the coach, and it rattled
up to the door, and in they got and away they drove. At first all went
well. The clouds hung low over the woods, the wind sighed in the trees, a
drearier day you could hardly imagine. So they joined the rest at the
other castle and took their seats to watch the jousting in the lists. So
intent were they in watching the gay spectacle of the prancing steeds, the
fluttering pennons, and the glittering armour of the knights, that they
failed to mark the change, the fatal change, in the weather. For the wind
was rising and had begun to disperse the clouds, and suddenly the sun
broke through, and the glory of it fell like an aureole on the young wife,
and at once she vanished away. No sooner did her husband miss her from his
side than he, too, mysteriously disappeared. The tournament broke up in
confusion, the bereft father hastened home, and shut himself up in the
dark castle from which the light of life had departed. The green woods and
the blue hills could still be seen from the window that looked to the
north, but the young faces that had gazed out of it so wistfully were
gone, as it seemed, for ever.(166)
(M56) A Tyrolese story tells how it was the doom of a lovely maiden with
golden hair to be transported into the belly of a whale if ever a sunbeam
fell on her. Hearing of the fame of her beauty the king of the country
sent for her to be his bride, and her brother drove the fair damsel to the
palace in a carefully closed coach, himself sitting on the box and
handling the reins. On the way they overtook two hideous witches, who
pretended they were weary and begged for a lift in the coach. At first the
brother refused to take them in, but his tender-hearted sister entreated
him to have compassion on the two poor footsore women; for you may easily
imagine that she was not acquainted with their true character. So down he
got rather surlily from the box, opened the coach door, and in the two
witches stepped, laughing in their sleeves. But no sooner had the brother
mounted the box and whipped up the horses, than one of the two wicked
witches bored a hole in the closed coach. A sunbeam at once shot through
the hole and fell on the fair damsel. So she vanished from the coach and
was spirited away into the belly of a whale in the neighbouring sea. You
can imagine the consternation of the king, when the coach door opened and
instead of his blooming bride out bounced two hideous hags!(167)
(M57) In a modern Greek folk-tale the Fates predict that in her fifteenth
year a princess must be careful not to let the sun shine on her, for if
this were to happen she would be turned into a lizard.(168) In another
modern Greek tale the Sun bestows a daughter upon a childless woman on
condition of taking the child back to himself when she is twelve years
old. So, when the child was twelve, the mother closed the doors and
windows, and stopped up all the chinks and crannies, to prevent the Sun
from coming to fetch away her daughter. But she forgot to stop up the
key-hole, and a sunbeam streamed through it and carried off the girl.(169)
In a Sicilian story a seer foretells that a king will have a daughter who,
in her fourteenth year, will conceive a child by the Sun. So, when the
child was born, the king shut her up in a lonely tower which had no
window, lest a sunbeam should fall on her. When she was nearly fourteen
years old, it happened that her parents sent her a piece of roasted kid,
in which she found a sharp bone. With this bone she scraped a hole in the
wall, and a sunbeam shot through the hole and got her with child.(170)
(M58) The old Greek story of Danae, who was confined by her father in a
subterranean chamber or a brazen tower, but impregnated by Zeus, who
reached her in the shape of a shower of gold,(171) perhaps belongs to the
same class of tales. It has its counterpart in the legend which the
Kirghiz of Siberia tell of their ancestry. A certain Khan had a fair
daughter, whom he kept in a dark iron house, that no man might see her. An
old woman tended her; and when the girl was grown to maidenhood she asked
the old woman, “Where do you go so often?” “My child,” said the old dame,
“there is a bright world. In that bright world your father and mother
live, and all sorts of people live there. That is where I go.” The maiden
said, “Good mother, I will tell nobody, but shew me that bright world.” So
the old woman took the girl out of the iron house. But when she saw the
bright world, the girl tottered and fainted; and the eye of God fell upon
her, and she conceived. Her angry father put her in a golden chest and
sent her floating away (fairy gold can float in fairyland) over the wide
sea.(172) The shower of gold in the Greek story, and the eye of God in the
Kirghiz legend, probably stand for sunlight and the sun.
(M59) The idea that women may be impregnated by the sun is not uncommon in
legends. Thus, for example, among the Indians of Guacheta in Colombia, it
is said, a report once ran that the sun would impregnate one of their
maidens, who should bear a child and yet remain a virgin. The chief had
two daughters, and was very desirous that one of them should conceive in
this miraculous manner. So every day he made them climb a hill to the east
of his house in order to be touched by the first beams of the rising sun.
His wishes were fulfilled, for one of the damsels conceived and after nine
months gave birth to an emerald. So she wrapped it in cotton and placed it
in her bosom, and in a few days it turned into a child, who received the
name of Garanchacha and was universally recognized as a son of the
sun.(173) Again, the Samoans tell of a woman named Mangamangai, who became
pregnant by looking at the rising sun. Her son grew up and was named
“Child of the Sun.” At his marriage he applied to his mother for a dowry,
but she bade him apply to his father, the sun, and told him how to go to
him. So one morning he took a long vine and made a noose in it; then
climbing up a tree he threw the noose over the sun and caught him fast.
Thus arrested in his progress, the luminary asked him what he wanted, and
being told by the young man that he wanted a present for his bride, the
sun obligingly packed up a store of blessings in a basket, with which the
youth descended to the earth.(174)
(M60) Even in the marriage customs of various races we may perhaps detect
traces of this belief that women can be impregnated by the sun. Thus
amongst the Chaco Indians of South America a newly married couple used to
sleep the first night on a mare’s or bullock’s skin with their heads
towards the west, “for the marriage is not considered ratified till the
rising sun shines on their feet the succeeding morning.”(175) At old
Hindoo marriages the first ceremony was the “Impregnation-rite”
(_Garbhādhāna_); during the previous day the bride was made to look
towards the sun or to be in some way exposed to its rays.(176) Amongst the
Turks of Siberia it was formerly the custom on the morning after the
marriage to lead the young couple out of the hut to greet the rising sun.
The same custom is said to be still practised in Iran and Central Asia
under a belief that the beams of the rising sun are the surest means of
impregnating the new bride.(177) And as some people think that women may
be gotten with child by the sun, so others imagine that they can conceive
by the moon. According to the Greenlanders the moon is a young man, and he
“now and then comes down to give their wives a visit and caress them; for
which reason no woman dare sleep lying upon her back, without she first
spits upon her fingers and rubs her belly with it. For the same reason the
young maids are afraid to stare long at the moon, imagining they may get a
child by the bargain.”(178) Similarly Breton peasants are reported to
believe that women or girls who expose their persons to the moonlight may
be impregnated by it and give birth to monsters.(179)
§ 8. Reasons for the Seclusion of Girls at Puberty.
(M61) The motive for the restraints so commonly imposed on girls at
puberty is the deeply engrained dread which primitive man universally
entertains of menstruous blood. He fears it at all times but especially on
its first appearance; hence the restrictions under which women lie at
their first menstruation are usually more stringent than those which they
have to observe at any subsequent recurrence of the mysterious flow. Some
evidence of the fear and of the customs based on it has been cited in an
earlier part of this work;(180) but as the terror, for it is nothing less,
which the phenomenon periodically strikes into the mind of the savage has
deeply influenced his life and institutions, it may be well to illustrate
the subject with some further examples.
(M62) Thus in the Encounter Bay tribe of South Australia there is, or used
to be, a “superstition which obliges a woman to separate herself from the
camp at the time of her monthly illness, when, if a young man or boy
should approach, she calls out, and he immediately makes a circuit to
avoid her. If she is neglectful upon this point, she exposes herself to
scolding, and sometimes to severe beating by her husband or nearest
relation, because the boys are told from their infancy, that if they see
the blood they will early become grey-headed, and their strength will fail
prematurely.”(181) And of the South Australian aborigines in general we
read that there is a “custom requiring all boys and uninitiated young men
to sleep at some distance from the huts of the adults, and to remove
altogether away in the morning as soon as daylight dawns, and the natives
begin to move about. This is to prevent their seeing the women, some of
whom may be menstruating; and if looked upon by the young males, it is
supposed that dire results will follow.”(182) And amongst these tribes
women in their courses “are not allowed to eat fish of any kind, or to go
near the water at all; it being one of their superstitions, that if a
female, in that state, goes near the water, no success can be expected by
the men in fishing.”(183) Similarly, among the natives of the Murray
River, menstruous women “were not allowed to go near water for fear of
frightening the fish. They were also not allowed to eat them, for the same
reason. A woman during such periods would never cross the river in a
canoe, or even fetch water for the camp. It was sufficient for her to say
_Thama_, to ensure her husband getting the water himself.”(184) The Dieri
of Central Australia believe that if women at these times were to eat fish
or bathe in a river, the fish would all die and the water would dry up. In
this tribe a mark made with red ochre round a woman’s mouth indicates that
she has her courses; no one would offer fish to such a woman.(185) The
Arunta of Central Australia forbid menstruous women to gather the
_irriakura_ bulbs, which form a staple article of diet for both men and
women. They believe that were a woman to break this rule, the supply of
bulbs would fail.(186) Among the aborigines of Victoria the wife at her
monthly periods had to sleep on the opposite side of the fire from her
husband; she might partake of nobody’s food, and nobody would partake of
hers, for people thought that if they ate or drank anything that had been
touched by a woman in her courses, it would make them weak or ill.
Unmarried girls and widows at such times had to paint their heads and the
upper parts of their bodies red,(187) no doubt as a danger signal.
(M63) In some Australian tribes the seclusion of menstruous women was even
more rigid, and was enforced by severer penalties than a scolding or a
beating. Thus with regard to certain tribes of New South Wales and
Southern Queensland we are told that “during the monthly illness, the
woman is not allowed to touch anything that men use, or even to walk on a
path that any man frequents, on pain of death.”(188) Again, “there is a
regulation relating to camps in the Wakelbura tribe which forbids the
women coming into the encampment by the same path as the men. Any
violation of this rule would in a large camp be punished with death. The
reason for this is the dread with which they regard the menstrual period
of women. During such a time, a woman is kept entirely away from the camp,
half a mile at least. A woman in such a condition has boughs of some tree
of her totem tied round her loins, and is constantly watched and guarded,
for it is thought that should any male be so unfortunate as to see a woman
in such a condition, he would die. If such a woman were to let herself be
seen by a man, she would probably be put to death. When the woman has
recovered, she is painted red and white, her head covered with feathers,
and returns to the camp.”(189)
(M64) In Muralug, one of the Torres Straits Islands, a menstruous woman
may not eat anything that lives in the sea, else the natives believe that
the fisheries would fail. Again, in Mabuiag, another of these islands,
women who have their courses on them may not eat turtle flesh nor turtle
eggs, probably for a similar reason. And during the season when the
turtles are pairing the restrictions laid on such a woman are much
severer. She may not even enter a house in which there is turtle flesh,
nor approach a fire on which the flesh is cooking; she may not go near the
sea and she should not walk on the beach below high-water mark. Nay, the
infection extends to her husband, who may not himself harpoon or otherwise
take an active part in catching turtle; however, he is permitted to form
one of the crew on a turtling expedition, provided he takes the precaution
of rubbing his armpits with certain leaves, to which no doubt a
disinfectant virtue is ascribed.(190) Among the Kai of German New Guinea
women at their monthly sickness must live in little huts built for them in
the forest; they may not enter the cultivated fields, for if they did go
to them, and the pigs were to taste of the blood, it would inspire the
animals with an irresistible desire to go likewise into the fields, where
they would commit great depredations on the growing crops. Hence the issue
from women at these times is carefully buried to prevent the pigs from
getting at it. And conversely, if the pigs often break into the fields,
the blame is laid on the women who by the neglect of these elementary
precautions have put temptation in the way of the swine.(191) In Galela,
to the west of New Guinea, women at their monthly periods may not enter a
tobacco-field, or the plants would be attacked by disease.(192) The
Minangkabauers of Sumatra are persuaded that if a woman in her unclean
state were to go near a rice-field, the crop would be spoiled.(193)
(M65) The Bushmen of South Africa think that, by a glance of a girl’s eye
at the time when she ought to be kept in strict retirement, men become
fixed in whatever position they happen to occupy, with whatever they were
holding in their hands, and are changed into trees that talk.(194)
Cattle-rearing tribes of South Africa hold that their cattle would die if
the milk were drunk by a menstruous woman;(195) and they fear the same
disaster if a drop of her blood were to fall on the ground and the oxen
were to pass over it. To prevent such a calamity women in general, not
menstruous women only, are forbidden to enter the cattle enclosure; and
more than that, they may not use the ordinary paths in entering the
village or in passing from one hut to another. They are obliged to make
circuitous tracks at the back of the huts in order to avoid the ground in
the middle of the village where the cattle stand or lie down. These
women’s tracks may be seen at every Caffre village.(196) Similarly among
the Bahima, a cattle-breeding tribe of Ankole, in Central Africa, no
menstruous woman may drink milk, lest by so doing she should injure the
cows; and she may not lie on her husband’s bed, no doubt lest she should
injure him. Indeed she is forbidden to lie on a bed at all and must sleep
on the ground. Her diet is restricted to vegetables and beer.(197) Among
the Baganda, in like manner, no menstruous woman might drink milk or come
into contact with any milk-vessel;(198) and she might not touch anything
that belonged to her husband, nor sit on his mat, nor cook his food. If
she touched anything of his at such a time it was deemed equivalent to
wishing him dead or to actually working magic for his destruction.(199)
Were she to handle any article of his, he would surely fall ill; were she
to handle his weapons, he would certainly be killed in the next battle.
Even a woman who did not menstruate was believed by the Baganda to be a
source of danger to her husband, indeed capable of killing him. Hence,
before he went to war, he used to wound her slightly with his spear so as
to draw blood; this was thought to ensure his safe return.(200) Apparently
the notion was that if the wife did not lose blood in one way or another,
her husband would be bled in war to make up for her deficiency; so by way
of guarding against this undesirable event, he took care to relieve her of
a little superfluous blood before he repaired to the field of honour.
Further, the Baganda would not suffer a menstruous woman to visit a well;
if she did so, they feared that the water would dry up, and that she
herself would fall sick and die, unless she confessed her fault and the
medicine-man made atonement for her.(201) Among the Akikuyu of British
East Africa, if a new hut is built in a village and the wife chances to
menstruate in it on the day she lights the first fire there, the hut must
be broken down and demolished the very next day. The woman may on no
account sleep a second night in it; there is a curse (_thahu_) both on her
and on it.(202) In the Suk tribe of British East Africa warriors may not
eat anything that has been touched by menstruous women. If they did so, it
is believed that they would lose their virility; “in the rain they will
shiver and in the heat they will faint.” Suk men and women take their
meals apart, because the men fear that one or more of the women may be
menstruating.(203) The Anyanja of British Central Africa, at the southern
end of Lake Nyassa, think that a man who should sleep with a woman in her
courses would fall sick and die, unless some remedy were applied in time.
And with them it is a rule that at such times a woman should not put any
salt into the food she is cooking, otherwise the people who partook of the
food salted by her would suffer from a certain disease called _tsempo_;
hence to obviate the danger she calls a child to put the salt into the
dish.(204)
(M66) Among the Hos, a tribe of Ewe negroes of Togoland in West Africa, so
long as a wife has her monthly sickness she may not cook for her husband,
nor lie on his bed, nor sit on his stool; an infraction of these rules
would assuredly, it is believed, cause her husband to die. If her husband
is a priest, or a magician, or a chief, she may not pass the days of her
uncleanness in the house, but must go elsewhere till she is clean.(205)
Among the Ewe negroes of this region each village has its huts where women
who have their courses on them must spend their time secluded from
intercourse with other people. Sometimes these huts stand by themselves in
public places; sometimes they are mere shelters built either at the back
or front of the ordinary dwelling-houses. A woman is punishable if she
does not pass the time of her monthly sickness in one of these huts or
shelters provided for her use. Thus, if she shews herself in her own house
or even in the yard of the house, she may be fined a sheep, which is
killed, its flesh divided among the people, and its blood poured on the
image of the chief god as a sin-offering to expiate her offence. She is
also forbidden to go to the place where the villagers draw water, and if
she breaks the rule, she must give a goat to be killed; its flesh is
distributed, and its blood, diluted with water and mixed with herbs, is
sprinkled on the watering-place and on the paths leading to it. Were any
woman to disregard these salutary precautions, the chief fetish-man in the
village would fall sick and die, which would be an irreparable loss to
society.(206)
(M67) The miraculous virtue ascribed to menstruous blood is well
illustrated in a story told by the Arab chronicler Tabari. He relates how
Sapor, king of Persia, besieged the strong city of Atrae, in the desert of
Mesopotamia, for several years without being able to take it. But the king
of the city, whose name was Daizan, had a daughter, and when it was with
her after the manner of women she went forth from the city and dwelt for a
time in the suburb, for such was the custom of the place. Now it fell out
that, while she tarried there, Sapor saw her and loved her, and she loved
him; for he was a handsome man and she a lovely maid. And she said to him,
“What will you give me if I shew you how you may destroy the walls of this
city and slay my father?” And he said to her, “I will give you what you
will, and I will exalt you above my other wives, and will set you nearer
to me than them all.” Then she said to him, “Take a greenish dove with a
ring about its neck, and write something on its foot with the menstruous
blood of a blue-eyed maid; then let the bird loose, and it will perch on
the walls of the city, and they will fall down.” For that, says the Arab
historian, was the talisman of the city, which could not be destroyed in
any other way. And Sapor did as she bade him, and the city fell down in a
heap, and he stormed it and slew Daizan on the spot.(207)
(M68) According to the Talmud, if a woman at the beginning of her period
passes between two men, she thereby kills one of them; if she passes
between them towards the end of her period, she only causes them to
quarrel violently.(208) Maimonides tells us that down to his time it was a
common custom in the East to keep women at their periods in a separate
house and to burn everything on which they had trodden; a man who spoke
with such a woman or who was merely exposed to the same wind that blew
over her, became thereby unclean.(209) Peasants of the Lebanon think that
menstruous women are the cause of many misfortunes; their shadow causes
flowers to wither and trees to perish, it even arrests the movements of
serpents; if one of them mounts a horse, the animal might die or at least
be disabled for a long time.(210) In Syria to this day a woman who has her
courses on her may neither salt nor pickle, for the people think that
whatever she pickled or salted would not keep.(211) The Toaripi of New
Guinea, doubtless for a similar reason, will not allow women at such times
to cook.(212) The Bhuiyars, a Dravidian tribe of South Mirzapur, are said
to feel an intense dread of menstrual pollution. Every house has two
doors, one of which is used only by women in this condition. During her
impurity the wife is fed by her husband apart from the rest of the family,
and whenever she has to quit the house she is obliged to creep out on her
hands and knees in order not to defile the thatch by her touch.(213) The
Kharwars, another aboriginal tribe of the same district, keep their women
at such seasons in the outer verandah of the house for eight days, and
will not let them enter the kitchen or the cow-house; during this time the
unclean woman may not cook nor even touch the cooking vessels. When the
eight days are over, she bathes, washes her clothes, and returns to family
life.(214) Hindoo women seclude themselves at their monthly periods and
observe a number of rules, such as not to drink milk, not to milk cows,
not to touch fire, not to lie on a high bed, not to walk on common paths,
not to cross the track of animals, not to walk by the side of flowering
plants, and not to observe the heavenly bodies.(215) The motive for these
restrictions is not mentioned, but probably it is a dread of the baleful
influence which is supposed to emanate from women at these times. The
Parsees, who reverence fire, will not suffer menstruous women to see it or
even to look on a lighted taper;(216) during their infirmity the women
retire from their houses to little lodges in the country, whither victuals
are brought to them daily; at the end of their seclusion they bathe and
send a kid, a fowl, or a pigeon to the priest as an offering.(217) In
Annam a woman at her monthly periods is deemed a centre of impurity, and
contact with her is avoided. She is subject to all sorts of restrictions
which she must observe herself and which others must observe towards her.
She may not touch any food which is to be preserved by salting, whether it
be fish, flesh, or vegetables; for were she to touch it the food would
putrefy. She may not enter any sacred place, she may not be present at any
religious ceremony. The linen which she wears at such times must be washed
by herself at sunrise, never at night. On reaching puberty girls may not
touch flowers or the fruits of certain trees, for touched by them the
flowers would fade and the fruits fall to the ground. “It is on account of
their reputation for impurity that the women generally live isolated. In
every house they have an apartment reserved for them, and they never eat
at the same table as the men. For the same reason they are excluded from
all religious ceremonies. They may only be present at family ceremonies,
but without ever officiating in them.”(218)
(M69) The Guayquiries of the Orinoco think that when a woman has her
courses, everything upon which she steps will die, and that if a man
treads on the place where she has passed, his legs will immediately swell
up.(219) Among the Guaraunos of the same great river, women at their
periods are regarded as unclean and kept apart in special huts, where all
that they need is brought to them.(220) In like manner among the Piapocos,
an Indian tribe on the Guayabero, a tributary of the Orinoco, a menstruous
woman is secluded from her family every month for four or five days. She
passes the time in a special hut, whither her husband brings her food; and
at the end of the time she takes a bath and resumes her usual
occupations.(221) So among the Indians of the Mosquito territory in
Central America, when a woman is in her courses, she must quit the village
for seven or eight days. A small hut is built for her in the wood, and at
night some of the village girls go and sleep with her to keep her company.
Or if the nights are dark and jaguars are known to be prowling in the
neighbourhood, her husband will take his gun or bow and sleep in a hammock
near her. She may neither handle nor cook food; all is prepared and
carried to her. When the sickness is over, she bathes in the river, puts
on clean clothes, and returns to her household duties.(222) Among the
Bri-bri Indians of Costa Rica a girl at her first menstruation retires to
a hut built for the purpose in the forest, and there she must stay till
she has been purified by a medicine-man, who breathes on her and places
various objects, such as feathers, the beaks of birds, the teeth of
beasts, and so forth, upon her body. A married woman at her periods
remains in the house with her husband, but she is reckoned unclean
(_bukuru_) and must avoid all intimate relations with him. She uses for
plates only banana leaves, which, when she has done with them, she throws
away in a sequestered spot; for should a cow find and eat them, the animal
would waste away and perish. Also she drinks only out of a special vessel,
because any person who should afterwards drink out of the same vessel
would infallibly pine away and die.(223)
(M70) Among most tribes of North American Indians the custom was that
women in their courses retired from the camp or the village and lived
during the time of their uncleanness in special huts or shelters which
were appropriated to their use. There they dwelt apart, eating and
sleeping by themselves, warming themselves at their own fires, and
strictly abstaining from all communications with men, who shunned them
just as if they were stricken with the plague. No article of furniture
used in these menstrual huts might be used in any other, not even the
flint and steel with which in the old days the fires were kindled. No one
would borrow a light from a woman in her seclusion. If a white man in his
ignorance asked to light his pipe at her fire, she would refuse to grant
the request, telling him that it would make his nose bleed and his head
ache, and that he would fall sick in consequence. If an Indian’s wooden
pipe cracked, his friends would think that he had either lit it at one of
these polluted fires or had held some converse with a woman during her
retirement, which was esteemed a most disgraceful and wicked thing to do.
Decent men would not approach within a certain distance of a woman at such
times, and if they had to convey anything to her they would stand some
forty or fifty paces off and throw it to her. Everything which was touched
by her hands during this period was deemed ceremonially unclean. Indeed
her touch was thought to convey such pollution that if she chanced to lay
a finger on a chief’s lodge or his gun or anything else belonging to him,
it would be instantly destroyed. If she crossed the path of a hunter or a
warrior, his luck for that day at least would be gone. Were she not thus
secluded, it was supposed that the men would be attacked by diseases of
various kinds, which would prove mortal. In some tribes a woman who
infringed the rules of separation might have to answer with her life for
any misfortunes that might happen to individuals or to the tribe in
consequence, as it was supposed, of her criminal negligence. When she
quitted her tent or hut to go into retirement, the fire in it was
extinguished and the ashes thrown away outside of the village, and a new
fire was kindled, as if the old one had been defiled by her presence. At
the end of their seclusion the women bathed in running streams and
returned to their usual occupations.(224)
(M71) Thus, to take examples, the Creek and kindred Indians of the United
States compelled women at menstruation to live in separate huts at some
distance from the village. There the women had to stay, at the risk of
being surprised and cut off by enemies. It was thought “a most horrid and
dangerous pollution” to go near the women at such times; and the danger
extended to enemies who, if they slew the women, had to cleanse themselves
from the pollution by means of certain sacred herbs and roots.(225)
Similarly, the Choctaw women had to quit their huts during their monthly
periods, and might not return till after they had been purified. While
their uncleanness lasted they had to prepare their own food. The men
believed that if they were to approach a menstruous woman, they would fall
ill, and that some mishap would overtake them when they went to the
wars.(226) When an Omaha woman has her courses on her, she retires from
the family to a little shelter of bark or grass, supported by sticks,
where she kindles a fire and cooks her victuals alone. Her seclusion lasts
four days. During this time she may not approach or touch a horse, for the
Indians believe that such contamination would impoverish or weaken the
animal.(227) Among the Potawatomis the women at their monthly periods “are
not allowed to associate with the rest of the nation; they are completely
laid aside, and are not permitted to touch any article of furniture or
food which the men have occasion to use. If the Indians be stationary at
the time, the women are placed outside of the camp; if on a march, they
are not allowed to follow the trail, but must take a different path and
keep at a distance from the main body.”(228) Among the Cheyennes
menstruous women slept in special lodges; the men believed that if they
slept with their wives at such times, they would probably be wounded in
their next battle. A man who owned a shield had very particularly to be on
his guard against women in their courses. He might not go into a lodge
where one of them happened to be, nor even into a lodge where one of them
had been, until a ceremony of purification had been performed. Sweet grass
and juniper were burnt in the tent, and the pegs were pulled up and the
covering thrown back, as if the tent were about to be struck. After this
pretence of decamping from the polluted spot the owner of the shield might
enter the tent.(229)
(M72) The Stseelis Indians of British Columbia imagined that if a
menstruous woman were to step over a bundle of arrows, the arrows would
thereby be rendered useless and might even cause the death of their owner;
and similarly that if she passed in front of a hunter who carried a gun,
the weapon would never shoot straight again. Neither her husband nor her
father would dream of going out to hunt while she was in this state; and
even if he had wished to do so, the other hunters would not go with him.
Hence to keep them out of harm’s way, the women, both married and
unmarried, were secluded at these times for four days in shelters.(230)
Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia every woman had to isolate
herself from the rest of the people during every recurring period of
menstruation, and had to live some little way off in a small brush or bark
lodge made for the purpose. At these times she was considered unclean,
must use cooking and eating utensils of her own, and was supplied with
food by some other woman. If she smoked out of a pipe other than her own,
that pipe would ever afterwards be hot to smoke. If she crossed in front
of a gun, that gun would thenceforth be useless for the war or the chase,
unless indeed the owner promptly washed the weapon in “medecine” or struck
the woman with it once on each principal part of her body. If a man ate or
had any intercourse with a menstruous woman, nay if he merely wore clothes
or mocassins made or patched by her, he would have bad luck in hunting and
the bears would attack him fiercely. Before being admitted again among the
people, she had to change all her clothes and wash several times in clear
water. The clothes worn during her isolation were hung on a tree, to be
used next time, or to be washed. For one day after coming back among the
people she did not cook food. Were a man to eat food cooked by a woman at
such times, he would have incapacitated himself for hunting and exposed
himself to sickness or death.(231)
(M73) Among the Chippeways and other Indians of the Hudson Bay Territory,
menstruous women are excluded from the camp, and take up their abode in
huts of branches. They wear long hoods, which effectually conceal the head
and breast. They may not touch the household furniture nor any objects
used by men; for their touch “is supposed to defile them, so that their
subsequent use would be followed by certain mischief or misfortune,” such
as disease or death. They must drink out of a swan’s bone. They may not
walk on the common paths nor cross the tracks of animals. They “are never
permitted to walk on the ice of rivers or lakes, or near the part where
the men are hunting beaver, or where a fishing-net is set, for fear of
averting their success. They are also prohibited at those times from
partaking of the head of any animal, and even from walking in or crossing
the track where the head of a deer, moose, beaver, and many other animals
have lately been carried, either on a sledge or on the back. To be guilty
of a violation of this custom is considered as of the greatest importance;
because they firmly believe that it would be a means of preventing the
hunter from having an equal success in his future excursions.”(232) So the
Lapps forbid women at menstruation to walk on that part of the shore where
the fishers are in the habit of setting out their fish;(233) and the
Esquimaux of Bering Strait believe that if hunters were to come near women
in their courses they would catch no game.(234)
(M74) But the beliefs and superstitions of this sort that prevail among
the western tribes of the great Déné or Tinneh stock, to which the
Chippeways belong, have been so well described by an experienced
missionary, that I will give his description in his own words. Prominent
among the ceremonial rites of these Indians, he says, “are the observances
peculiar to the fair sex, and many of them are remarkably analogous to
those practised by the Hebrew women, so much so that, were it not
savouring of profanity, the ordinances of the Déné ritual code might be
termed a new edition ‘revised and considerably augmented’ of the Mosaic
ceremonial law. Among the Carriers,(235) as soon as a girl has experienced
the first flow of the menses which in the female constitution are a
natural discharge, her father believed himself under the obligation of
atoning for her supposedly sinful condition by a small impromptu
distribution of clothes among the natives. This periodical state of women
was considered as one of legal impurity fateful both to the man who
happened to have any intercourse, however indirect, with her, and to the
woman herself who failed in scrupulously observing all the rites
prescribed by ancient usage for persons in her condition.
(M75) “Upon entering into that stage of her life, the maiden was
immediately sequestered from company, even that of her parents, and
compelled to dwell in a small branch hut by herself away from beaten paths
and the gaze of passers-by. As she was supposed to exercise malefic
influence on any man who might inadvertently glance at her, she had to
wear a sort of head-dress combining in itself the purposes of a veil, a
bonnet, and a mantlet. It was made of tanned skin, its forepart was shaped
like a long fringe completely hiding from view the face and breasts; then
it formed on the head a close-fitting cap or bonnet, and finally fell in a
broad band almost to the heels. This head-dress was made and publicly
placed on her head by a paternal aunt, who received at once some present
from the girl’s father. When, three or four years later, the period of
sequestration ceased, only this same aunt had the right to take off her
niece’s ceremonial head-dress. Furthermore, the girl’s fingers, wrists,
and legs at the ankles and immediately below the knees, were encircled
with ornamental rings and bracelets of sinew intended as a protection
against the malign influences she was supposed to be possessed with.(236)
To a belt girding her waist were suspended two bone implements called
respectively _Tsoenkuz_ (bone tube) and _Tsiltsoet_ (head scratcher). The
former was a hollowed swan bone to drink with, any other mode of drinking
being unlawful to her. The latter was fork-like and was called into
requisition whenever she wanted to scratch her head—immediate contact of
the fingers with the head being reputed injurious to her health. While
thus secluded, she was called _asta_, that is ‘interred alive’ in Carrier,
and she had to submit to a rigorous fast and abstinence. Her only allowed
food consisted of dried fish boiled in a small bark vessel which nobody
else must touch, and she had to abstain especially from meat of any kind,
as well as fresh fish. Nor was this all she had to endure; even her
contact, however remote, with these two articles of diet was so dreaded
that she could not cross the public paths or trails, or the tracks of
animals. Whenever absolute necessity constrained her to go beyond such
spots, she had to be packed or carried over them lest she should
contaminate the game or meat which had passed that way, or had been
brought over these paths; and also for the sake of self-preservation
against tabooed, and consequently to her, deleterious food. In the same
way she was never allowed to wade in streams or lakes, for fear of causing
death to the fish.
“It was also a prescription of the ancient ritual code for females during
this primary condition to eat as little as possible, and to remain lying
down, especially in course of each monthly flow, not only as a natural
consequence of the prolonged fast and resulting weakness; but chiefly as
an exhibition of a becoming penitential spirit which was believed to be
rewarded by long life and continual good health in after years.
(M76) “These mortifications or seclusion did not last less than three or
four years. Useless to say that during all that time marriage could not be
thought of, since the girl could not so much as be seen by men. When
married, the same sequestration was practised relatively to husband and
fellow-villagers—without the particular head-dress and rings spoken of—on
the occasion of every recurring menstruation. Sometimes it was protracted
as long as ten days at a time, especially during the first years of
cohabitation. Even when she returned to her mate, she was not permitted to
sleep with him on the first nor frequently on the second night, but would
choose a distant corner of the lodge to spread her blanket, as if afraid
to defile him with her dread uncleanness.”(237) Elsewhere the same writer
tells us that most of the devices to which these Indians used to resort
for the sake of ensuring success in the chase “were based on their regard
for continence and their excessive repugnance for, and dread of,
menstruating women.”(238) But the strict observances imposed on Tinneh or
Déné women at such times were designed at the same time to protect the
women themselves from the evil consequences of their dangerous condition.
Thus it was thought that women in their courses could not partake of the
head, heart, or hind part of an animal that had been caught in a snare
without exposing themselves to a premature death through a kind of rabies.
They might not cut or carve salmon, because to do so would seriously
endanger their health, and especially would enfeeble their arms for life.
And they had to abstain from cutting up the grebes which are caught by the
Carriers in great numbers every spring, because otherwise the blood with
which these fowls abound would occasion hæmorrhage or an unnaturally
prolonged flux in the transgressor.(239) Similarly Indian women of the
Thompson tribe abstained from venison and the flesh of other large game
during menstruation, lest the animals should be displeased and the
menstrual flow increased.(240) For a similar reason, probably, Shuswap
girls during their seclusion at puberty are forbidden to eat anything that
bleeds.(241) The same principle may perhaps partly explain the rule, of
which we have had some examples, that women at such times should refrain
from fish and flesh, and restrict themselves to a vegetable diet.
(M77) The philosophic student of human nature will observe, or learn,
without surprise that ideas thus deeply ingrained in the savage mind
reappear at a more advanced stage of society in those elaborate codes
which have been drawn up for the guidance of certain peoples by lawgivers
who claim to have derived the rules they inculcate from the direct
inspiration of the deity. However we may explain it, the resemblance which
exists between the earliest official utterances of the deity and the ideas
of savages is unquestionably close and remarkable; whether it be, as some
suppose, that God communed face to face with man in those early days, or,
as others maintain, that man mistook his wild and wandering thoughts for a
revelation from heaven. Be that as it may, certain it is that the natural
uncleanness of woman at her monthly periods is a conception which has
occurred, or been revealed, with singular unanimity to several ancient
legislators. The Hindoo lawgiver Manu, who professed to have received his
institutes from the creator Brahman, informs us that the wisdom, the
energy, the strength, the sight, and the vitality of a man who approaches
a woman in her courses will utterly perish; whereas, if he avoids her, his
wisdom, energy, strength, sight, and vitality will all increase.(242) The
Persian lawgiver Zoroaster, who, if we can take his word for it, derived
his code from the mouth of the supreme being Ahura Mazda, devoted special
attention to the subject. According to him, the menstrous flow, at least
in its abnormal manifestations, is a work of Ahriman, or the devil.
Therefore, so long as it lasts, a woman “is unclean and possessed of the
demon; she must be kept confined, apart from the faithful whom her touch
would defile, and from the fire which her very look would injure; she is
not allowed to eat as much as she wishes, as the strength she might
acquire would accrue to the fiends. Her food is not given her from hand to
hand, but is passed to her from a distance, in a long leaden spoon.”(243)
The Hebrew lawgiver Moses, whose divine legation is as little open to
question as that of Manu and Zoroaster, treats the subject at still
greater length; but I must leave to the reader the task of comparing the
inspired ordinances on this head with the merely human regulations of the
Carrier Indians which they so closely resemble.
(M78) Amongst the civilized nations of Europe the superstitions which
cluster round this mysterious aspect of woman’s nature are not less
extravagant than those which prevail among savages. In the oldest existing
cyclopaedia—the _Natural History_ of Pliny—the list of dangers apprehended
from menstruation is longer than any furnished by mere barbarians.
According to Pliny, the touch of a menstruous woman turned wine to
vinegar, blighted crops, killed seedlings, blasted gardens, brought down
the fruit from trees, dimmed mirrors, blunted razors, rusted iron and
brass (especially at the waning of the moon), killed bees, or at least
drove them from their hives, caused mares to miscarry, and so forth.(244)
Similarly, in various parts of Europe, it is still believed that if a
woman in her courses enters a brewery the beer will turn sour; if she
touches beer, wine, vinegar, or milk, it will go bad; if she makes jam, it
will not keep; if she mounts a mare, it will miscarry; if she touches
buds, they will wither; if she climbs a cherry tree, it will die.(245) In
Brunswick people think that if a menstruous woman assists at the killing
of a pig, the pork will putrefy.(246) In the Greek island of Calymnos a
woman at such times may not go to the well to draw water, nor cross a
running stream, nor enter the sea. Her presence in a boat is said to raise
storms.(247)
(M79) Thus the object of secluding women at menstruation is to neutralize
the dangerous influences which are supposed to emanate from them at such
times. That the danger is believed to be especially great at the first
menstruation appears from the unusual precautions taken to isolate girls
at this crisis. Two of these precautions have been illustrated above,
namely, the rules that the girl may not touch the ground nor see the sun.
The general effect of these rules is to keep her suspended, so to say,
between heaven and earth. Whether enveloped in her hammock and slung up to
the roof, as in South America, or raised above the ground in a dark and
narrow cage, as in New Ireland, she may be considered to be out of the way
of doing mischief, since, being shut off both from the earth and from the
sun, she can poison neither of these great sources of life by her deadly
contagion. In short, she is rendered harmless by being, in electrical
language, insulated. But the precautions thus taken to isolate or insulate
the girl are dictated by a regard for her own safety as well as for the
safety of others. For it is thought that she herself would suffer if she
were to neglect the prescribed regimen. Thus Zulu girls, as we have seen,
believe that they would shrivel to skeletons if the sun were to shine on
them at puberty, and in some Brazilian tribes the young women think that a
transgression of the rules would entail sores on the neck and throat. In
short, the girl is viewed as charged with a powerful force which, if not
kept within bounds, may prove destructive both to herself and to all with
whom she comes in contact. To repress this force within the limits
necessary for the safety of all concerned is the object of the taboos in
question.
(M80) The same explanation applies to the observance of the same rules by
divine kings and priests. The uncleanness, as it is called, of girls at
puberty and the sanctity of holy men do not, to the primitive mind, differ
materially from each other. They are only different manifestations of the
same mysterious energy which, like energy in general, is in itself neither
good nor bad, but becomes beneficent or maleficent according to its
application.(248) Accordingly, if, like girls at puberty, divine
personages may neither touch the ground nor see the sun, the reason is, on
the one hand, a fear lest their divinity might, at contact with earth or
heaven, discharge itself with fatal violence on either; and, on the other
hand, an apprehension that the divine being, thus drained of his ethereal
virtue, might thereby be incapacitated for the future performance of those
magical functions, upon the proper discharge of which the safety of the
people and even of the world is believed to hang. Thus the rules in
question fall under the head of the taboos which we examined in the second
part of this work;(249) they are intended to preserve the life of the
divine person and with it the life of his subjects and worshippers.
Nowhere, it is thought, can his precious yet dangerous life be at once so
safe and so harmless as when it is neither in heaven nor in earth, but, as
far as possible, suspended between the two.(250)
(M81) In legends and folk-tales, which reflect the ideas of earlier ages,
we find this suspension between heaven and earth attributed to beings who
have been endowed with the coveted yet burdensome gift of immortality. The
wizened remains of the deathless Sibyl are said to have been preserved in
a jar or urn which hung in a temple of Apollo at Cumae; and when a group
of merry children, tired, perhaps, of playing in the sunny streets, sought
the shade of the temple and amused themselves by gathering underneath the
familiar jar and calling out, “Sibyl, what do you wish?” a hollow voice,
like an echo, used to answer from the urn, “I wish to die.”(251) A story,
taken down from the lips of a German peasant at Thomsdorf, relates that
once upon a time there was a girl in London who wished to live for ever,
so they say:
“_London, London is a fine town._
_A maiden prayed to live for ever._”
And still she lives and hangs in a basket in a church, and every St.
John’s Day, about the hour of noon, she eats a roll of bread.(252) Another
German story tells of a lady who resided at Danzig and was so rich and so
blest with all that life can give that she wished to live always. So when
she came to her latter end, she did not really die but only looked like
dead, and very soon they found her in a hollow of a pillar in the church,
half standing and half sitting, motionless. She stirred never a limb, but
they saw quite plainly that she was alive, and she sits there down to this
blessed day. Every New Year’s Day the sacristan comes and puts a morsel of
the holy bread in her mouth, and that is all she has to live on. Long,
long has she rued her fatal wish who set this transient life above the
eternal joys of heaven.(253) A third German story tells of a noble damsel
who cherished the same foolish wish for immortality. So they put her in a
basket and hung her up in a church, and there she hangs and never dies,
though many a year has come and gone since they put her there. But every
year on a certain day they give her a roll, and she eats it and cries out,
“For ever! for ever! for ever!” And when she has so cried she falls silent
again till the same time next year, and so it will go on for ever and for
ever.(254) A fourth story, taken down near Oldenburg in Holstein, tells of
a jolly dame that ate and drank and lived right merrily and had all that
heart could desire, and she wished to live always. For the first hundred
years all went well, but after that she began to shrink and shrivel up,
till at last she could neither walk nor stand nor eat nor drink. But die
she could not. At first they fed her as if she were a little child, but
when she grew smaller and smaller they put her in a glass bottle and hung
her up in the church. And there she still hangs, in the church of St.
Mary, at Lübeck. She is as small as a mouse, but once a year she
stirs.(255)