WHOLE VOL. ARAUCANIAN CHILD LIFE — HILGER II 



with scissors, girls will be born to him ; if with a knife, boys — a belief, 

 non-Araucanians thought, taken from Chileans. This may have been 

 known to schoolboys who warned a boy against using scissors in 

 cutting his damaged fingernails. "A boy had better use a knife," one 

 advised. The machi (sorcerer) had no power to produce sex. 



In instances, it is believed, the sex of the unborn child can be pre- 

 dicted. If an expectant mother has much nausea, she is carrying a 

 girl ; also if her eyes have less color than usual, and her face is pale. 

 If her complexion is fair and there is no change in the color of her 

 eyes, she is carrying a boy. Also, if her last baby was a girl, and she 

 has pain throughout her body during the present pregnancy, she is 

 carrying a boy. If a man dreams of a falcon, his next child will be 

 a boy. 



REBIRTH 



Araucanians have no belief in reincarnation. One old man had 

 wondered about a child that he saw born Avith two teeth, but he had 

 no explanation for it. Other informants had neither heard of nor 

 seen a child born with teeth, with a patch of white hair, with snips out 

 of the ears, or with scars — signs of rebirth among Chippewa or 

 Arapaho (Hilger, 1951, p. 4, and 1952, pp. 5-6).^ Beliefs regarding 

 rebirth interested informants. "What kind of Indians can these be 

 that they can be reborn !" 



FOOD AND CONDUCT TABOOS 



In Cofiaripe and Panguipulli areas prenatal food taboos were not 

 known to exist. In one section of Alepue area a pregnant woman 

 must not eat jaiba (raniim), a small sea animal that attaches itself 

 to a rock, or she will have a difficult delivery, for "the child will at- 

 tach itself tight to the uterus." In another section of the same area, 

 to prevent similar subsequent effects, all men and women of child- 

 bearing age and all children must refrain from eating jaiba. Two 

 women, probably 60 and 80 years of age, when young had been in- 

 structed by older women not to eat jaiba, but neither of them believed 

 in its supposedly bad effects. Both mentioned women and their hus- 

 bands who had eaten it, and the women, they knew, had each given 

 birth to many children and all deliveries had been easy. 



3 All references to the Chippewa in the present study are found in Hilger, 

 Sister M. Inez, Chippewa child life and its cultural background, Bur. Amer. 

 Ethnol. Bull. 146, 1951 ; and those to the Arapaho, in Arapaho child life and its 

 cultural background, Bur. Amer. Ethnol. Bull. 148, 1952. 



