for four days.  However, she may remain in her father’s lodge provided that there are no charms ("medicine"), no sacred bundle, and no shield in it, or that these and all other objects invested with a sacred character have been removed.  For four days she may not eat boiled meat; the flesh of which she partakes must be roasted over coals.  Young men will not eat from the dish nor drink from the pot, which has been used by her; because they believe that were they to do so they would be wounded in the next fight.  She may not handle nor even touch any weapon of war or any sacred object.  If the camp moves, she may not ride a horse, but is mounted on a mare.[129]

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Esquimaux.]

Among the Esquimaux also, in the extreme north of the continent, who belong to an entirely different race from the Indians, the attainment of puberty in the female sex is, or used to be, the occasion of similar observances.  Thus among the Koniags, an Esquimau people of Alaska, a girl at puberty was placed in a small hut in which she had to remain on her hands and knees for six months; then the hut was enlarged a little so as to allow her to straighten her back, but in this posture she had to remain for six months more.  All this time she was regarded as an unclean being with whom no one might hold intercourse.  At the end of the year she was received back by her parents and a great feast held.[130] Again, among the Malemut, and southward from the lower Yukon and adjacent districts, when a girl reaches the age of puberty she is considered unclean for forty days and must therefore live by herself in a corner of the house with her face to the wall, always keeping her hood over her head and her hair hanging dishevelled over her eyes.  But if it is summer, she commonly lives in a rough shelter outside the house.  She may not go out by day, and only once at night, when every one else is asleep.  At the end of the period she bathes and is clothed in new garments, whereupon she may be taken in marriage.  During her seclusion she is supposed to be enveloped in a peculiar atmosphere of such a sort that were a young man to come near enough for it to touch him, it would render him visible to every animal he might hunt, so that his luck as a hunter would be gone.[131]

Sec. 5. Seclusion of Girls at Puberty among the Indians of South America

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Guaranis, Chiriguanos, and Lengua Indians of South America.]

When symptoms of puberty appeared on a girl for the first time, the Guaranis of Southern Brazil, on the borders of Paraguay, used to sew her up in her hammock, leaving only a small opening in it to allow her to breathe.  In this condition, wrapt up and shrouded like a corpse, she was kept for two or three days or so long as the symptoms lasted, and during this time she had to observe a most rigorous fast.  After that she was entrusted to a matron, who cut