a porcupine, in order that for the rest of her life her shoes may never wear out.  Round her waist she wears a cord to which are tied the heads of femurs of a porcupine; because of all animals known to the Tinneh the porcupine suffers least in parturition, it simply drops its young and continues to walk or skip about as if nothing had happened.  Hence it is easy to see that a girl who wears these portions of a porcupine about her waist, will be delivered just as easily as the animal.  To make quite sure of this, if anybody happens to kill a porcupine big with young while the girl is undergoing her period of separation, the foetus is given to her, and she lets it slide down between her shirt and her body so as to fall on the ground like an infant.[122] Here the imitation of childbirth is a piece of homoeopathic or imitative magic designed to facilitate the effect which it simulates.[123]

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia.]

Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia, when a girl attained puberty, she was at once separated from all the people.  A conical hut of fir branches and bark was erected at some little distance from the other houses, and in it the girl had to squat on her heels during the day.  Often a deep circular hole was dug in the hut and the girl squatted in the hole, with her head projecting above the surface of the ground.  She might quit the hut for various purposes in the early morning, but had always to be back at sunrise.  On the first appearance of the symptoms her face was painted red all over, and the paint was renewed every morning during her term of seclusion.  A heavy blanket swathed her body from top to toe, and during the first four days she wore a conical cap made of small fir branches, which reached below the breast but left an opening for the face.  In her hair was fastened an implement made of deer-bone with which she scratched herself.  For the first four days she might neither wash nor eat, but a little water was given her in a birch-bark cup painted red, and she sucked up the liquid through a tube made out of the leg of a crane, a swan, or a goose, for her lips might not touch the surface of the water.  After the four days she was allowed, during the rest of the period of isolation, to eat, to wash, to lie down, to comb her hair, and to drink of streams and springs.  But in drinking at these sources she had still to use her tube, otherwise the spring would dry up.  While her seclusion lasted she performed by night various ceremonies, which were supposed to exert a beneficial influence on her future life.  For example, she ran as fast as she could, praying at the same time to the Earth or Nature that she might be fleet of foot and tireless of limb.  She dug trenches, in order that in after life she might be able to dig well and to work hard.  These and other ceremonies she repeated for four nights or mornings in succession, four times each morning, and each time