238 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I33 



Mapuche. Culturally they were and are an agricultural people ; today 

 they also raise cattle and sheep. Linguistically they are, along with 

 the Argentine Araucanians, an independent family, their language 

 being known as Araucanian. 



Prenatal factors. — Of a childless couple, the woman is believed to 

 be the sterile person. By means of medicinal preparations, it is said, 

 either sterility or fertility can be produced. According to Cooper's 

 sources impotency can be brought upon an unfaithful paramour by an 

 unmarried mother as revenge. The number of children in the families 

 interviewed varied from 3 to 11. 



Prenatal period. — The period of gestation is reckoned by the moon ; 

 only the approximate time of delivery is known. Most informants had 

 not thought about the time that the fetus becomes human ; all agreed 

 that it is human at birth. 



Abortifacients — some being common knowledge, others being 

 known only to specialists — ^had been used by an occasional woman, 

 married or unmarried. Spontaneous abortions also occurred. 



Boys were, and are, preferred to girls. Girls, however, are in no 

 way made to feel unwanted. Drinking a specific medicinal preparation 

 known to few is said to bring about the conception of a boy. There 

 is no preference regarding the first-born. 



It is believed that an expectant mother, because of certain physical 

 reactions, can predict the sex of her child, and that other persons 

 can do so because of the presence or absence of certain facial changes 

 in the expectant mother. A father who dreams of a falcon can expect 

 a son. There is no belief in reincarnation. 



Informants in Cofiaripe and Panguipulli areas had no beliefs in pre- 

 natal food taboos. In one section of Alepue area such beliefs exist for 

 an expectant mother ; in another section of the same area, all children 

 and all men and women of child-bearing age are prohibited from eating 

 jaiba, a small sea animal that attaches itself to a rock. Twins could 

 be expected if either the man or the woman ate the double yolk of an 



An expectant mother must not be frightened lest she abort or give 

 premature birth ; she must observe certain conduct taboos lest it affect 

 her unborn child or its delivery. 



Childbirth, and care of mother and neivhorn baby. — Informants in- 

 sisted that a child is always born in the ruka which is its home — 

 according to Cooper's sources it is born in a specially built one. Per- 

 sons present at a delivery are the woman's husband and their children, 

 her mother, a midwife or two, occasionally other relatives of the 



