NO. 4 NEW ORIGINAL BOSCANA HARRINGTON 39 



turtles with some little stones inside, they call it Paail, hecause the turtle 

 is called thus. It was made like the following figure [drawing of two- 

 shell turtle rattle follows this word and another with grasping hand 

 is given in left margin | ; they also used, when the paail was lacking, 

 some reeds open down the middle, and the singers sound them and 

 sing, and when the couplet is finished it is repeated by the men and 

 women who are dancing. Many of their dances do not contain any- 

 thing more than a mocking of certain animals. 



Among all the feasts which they celebrated every year, among the 

 principal and most solemn ones was one which they called the feast of 

 the Fames, which means the feast of the bird, for they gave a kind of 

 worship and veneration to a bird which has the same form and size as 

 a kite, although somewhat larger. It is a kind of carnivorous hawk, 

 but very sluggish and stupid. The day set for the great feast of the 

 Fames, which feast consisted of many extravagancies, was spent as 

 follows. The night before, the crier, crying throughout the town, in- 

 vited all to the great feast which began the following morning. First 

 they made outside the town or rancheria a kind of temple. To this 

 temple, which was not used for anything more than for that function, 

 the elders or Puplem carried the said Fames or bird in silence. 



Note: The construction of this temple consisted in cleaning off a piece of 

 ground from i^ to 2 yards in diameter, of round shape, and around the edge 

 they set some brush of willow, cottonwood, or other brush, and sometimes they 

 did not set anything, but very clear of any litter. 



The Fames having arrived at the said temple, immediately the un- 

 married girls, and the married ones, but young, who had not yet given 

 birth to a child, began to run like crazy women, some in one direction, 

 some in another, without order or arrangement, whose running lasted 

 for about an hour, more or less. While they were running all the rest 

 of the people were looking at them, and with the old men or elders 

 daubed up with black, uglier than the very Devil, dancing around the 

 bird. When all that we have mentioned above was concluded, they 

 took the Fames and with all the people in procession they carried it to 

 the principal temple, the Fuplem dancing and singing in front of the 

 bird all the way. Arriving at the Vanquex, they killed it, without 

 drawing blood, they stripped ofif and dried the skin with the feathers 

 on, which latter they kept as a relic, for from these feathers they made 

 the little skirt or pdelt, as they call it, for dressing the Chinigchinix 

 [figure], and for dancing. Then they buried it [the body of the 

 Fames] in a hole which they had made inside the Vanquex, the old 

 women immediately rushing to the spot crying and well stained up 

 with black gum, throwing to it [to the Fames] seeds, pinole and 



