22 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 92 



got fixed up with their mothers and grandmothers alone, without so 

 much witchcraft. In their present status of being Christians they 

 use the same procedure, with the witchcraft removed, which they 

 used in their gentihty, of feathers, dances and songs. 



The most pecuhar custom which these Indians had was that 

 there were a few [girls] although very few, daughters of chiefs, 

 and among these principally the first born, in the case of whom, 

 after the catamenia had come to an end and the girls had come forth 

 from the roasting, an old man, one of the wizards, designated for the 

 purpose, made with a flint a little cut in the girl's private parts, and 

 after the operation started preaching before all the people, saying 

 that that girl was already a woman, that she was good, that she would 

 have many children, and other similar nonsense. 



