to fit very tight; this is never taken off until their first monthly sickness ceases; they also wear a strip of black paint about one inch wide across their eyes, and wear a fringe of shells, bones, etc., hanging down from their foreheads to below their eyes; and this is never taken off till the second monthly period arrives and ceases, when the nearest male relative makes a feast; after which she is considered a fully matured woman; but she has to refrain from eating anything fresh for one year after her first monthly sickness; she may however eat partridge, but it must be cooked in the crop of the bird to render it harmless.  I would have thought it impossible to perform this feat had I not seen it done.  The crop is blown out, and a small bent willow put round the mouth; it is then filled with water, and the meat being first minced up, put in also, then put on the fire and boiled till cooked.  Their reason for hanging fringes before their eyes, is to hinder any bad medicine man from harming them during this critical period:  they are very careful not to drink whilst facing a medicine man, and do so only when their backs are turned to him.  All these habits are left off when the girl is a recognised woman, with the exception of their going out of the lodge and remaining in a hut, every time their periodical sickness comes on.  This is a rigidly observed law with both single and married women."[120]

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Tinneh Indians of Alaska.]

Among the Hareskin Tinneh a girl at puberty was secluded for five days in a hut made specially for the purpose; she might only drink out of a tube made from a swan’s bone, and for a month she might not break a hare’s bones, nor taste blood, nor eat the heart or fat of animals, nor birds’ eggs.[121] Among the Tinneh Indians of the middle Yukon valley, in Alaska, the period of the girl’s seclusion lasts exactly a lunar month; for the day of the moon on which the symptoms first occur is noted, and she is sequestered until the same day of the next moon.  If the season is winter, a corner of the house is curtained off for her use by a blanket or a sheet of canvas; if it is summer, a small tent is erected for her near the common one.  Here she lives and sleeps.  She wears a long robe and a large hood, which she must pull down over her eyes whenever she leaves the hut, and she must keep it down till she returns.  She may not speak to a man nor see his face, much less touch his clothes or anything that belongs to him; for if she did so, though no harm would come to her, he would grow unmanly.  She has her own dishes for eating out of and may use no other; at Kaltag she must suck the water through a swan’s bone without applying her lips to the cup.  She may eat no fresh meat or fish except the flesh of the porcupine.  She may not undress, but sleeps with all her clothes on, even her mittens.  In her socks she wears, next to the skin, the horny soles cut from the feet of