NO. 4 NEW ORIGINAL BOSCANA HARRINGTON 21 



What these In(h'ans had rare and special was that the fathers and 

 mothers advised their daughters when they were grown up, telhng 

 them that if while gathering seeds for pinole or traveling to some 

 other place they met with one of the eaters of human flesh or one 

 of the wizards, and these wanted to use them, they should not resist, 

 but should agreeably comply with their desires, and this though 

 they might be going along with their own mothers, or if married 

 they might be going along with their husbands, for these latter at 

 the first insinuation yielded their right. And this was because they 

 told the women that if they resisted and did not willingly comply, 

 they would poison them with herbs and make their bodies rot, along 

 with other similar nonsense, and the poor wretched women believed 

 it infallibly, and full of fear they submitted to everything, although 

 it was against their wishes. 



At the first menstruation, or at the time of the first monthly, as 

 they say, they used to hold some big feasts with many ceremonies, 

 which began in the following manner : They made, and still do 

 make, a hole about a half yard in depth, not round but long, after 

 the fashion of a grave, they fill it with fire with some rocks in it, 

 and when it is good and hot they clean the hot coals out of it, 

 leaving in it the rocks, good and hot, they lay on top of them a 

 bedding, as it were, of California Mugwort (which is a species of 

 Wormwood), called Pacsil. On top of the California Mugwort the 

 girl lies, covered up well, without being given anything to eat or 

 drink for 2 or 3 days, or at least very little, and thus they keep 

 her until she has become clean. In there, the girl patient, in her hot 

 pit, is bedecked all about the pit with the feathers of various birds, 

 shell beads, and many things which they have, and with some old 

 women, who have that task, singing without letting her rest either 

 day or night, a song so tiresome that one does not know if they 

 are crying or laughing, a black glue or bitumen on their faces so 

 that they look like devils. I have not been able to determine what 

 they say in their song, because I can never understand them [the 

 old women], and when I asked others about it. they all answered 

 that they did not understand them, while unmarried women dance 

 around the girl patient at certain designated hours during every 

 day of the roasting. Since these days were feast days, many people, 

 men and women, went there, some to dance and others to watch 

 the dancing and to get something of what was being distributed, 

 be it pinole, shell beads, or whatever it was. The above described 

 was the general method, with exception of some poor [girls] who 



