Feb., 1905. Oraibi Natal Customs — Voth. 5,^ 



fire itself. It is all right, however, to place and cook something over 

 the fire. 



A primapara is not allowed to leave the house before sundown dur- 

 ing the entire puerperal period, while a multipara may do so occasion- 

 ally after the fifth day. Neither is supposed to go barefooted during 

 those twenty days.* 



The child is every morning bathed and rubbed in by the godmother 

 with ashes or powder of the clay already mentioned, and is then fastened 

 to its cradle board. Food of various kinds, but all prepared with cedar 

 leaves, and some with salt or fat, is given to the patient every day, 

 and everything must be warm, at least during the first part of the 

 lying-in period, as already stated. On the fifth day after the child 

 has been attended to. the woman's head is washed with yucca suds, 

 and her body bathed with a hot infusion of juniper leaves, her clothes 

 are then changed, her bed, pads, etc., removed, whereupon the attend- 

 ant takes the soiled clothes to one of the distant springs where they 

 are washed, some leaves of juniper also being used in the water. When 

 the clothes are dry they are brought back and used as usual. On this 

 day, after the bathing of the child and the mother, the lowermost of the 

 four lines on the four walls is scraped off by the mother, or, if she be 

 not well enough, by her mother or mother-in-law. She scrapes it into 

 her hand, and going to the edge of the mesa she holds the meal to 

 her lips, utters a little prayer, and sprinkles it to the rising sun. She 

 says something like the following: 



" Your beautiful rays may they color (illumine) our faces; being 

 dyed in them, somewhere at an old age we shall fall asleep old women." 

 Fall asleep an old man is substituted if the child be a boy. (Conwak uh 

 taldongway itdmui pichdngtoinaq, put itam pichdngwaikahkang woydmik 

 bdkdmi ndwokiwinkang wilhtihaskuwuwani. Wiihtakwuwani is substituted 

 if the child be a boy.) 



On the tenth and fifteenth mornings after the birth of the child, the 

 head and entire body of the mother, as well as that of the child, is 

 washed by the godmother the same as on the fifth day. The father of the 

 child usually washes his own head also. On some occasions a tw4g 

 of juniper is placed in a vessel on the fifth, tenth, and fifteenth days, 

 some water poured on it, and a hot stone put into it. The mother 

 then stands over this vessel, and thus is subjected to a steam-bath. 

 She also washes her limbs and body with the liquid, whereupon the 

 water, stone, and twig are carried to a special place outside of the vil- 



*A9 buckskin, and consequently also woman's moccasins, are beginning to get scarce, 

 women who anticipate such a twenty days' "confinement," or their friends, frequently come to 

 the mission and beg (or a pair of stockings to be worn by them daring that time. 



