228 



INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY PUBLICATION NO. 6 



a last recourse a small chicken was beheaded and the 

 bloody neck inserted in the infant's anus. 



In case of slow deliveries the midwife's assistants 

 raised the woman and shook her, "as one does to a 

 sack to fill it completely." Meanwhile pressure was 

 exerted on the abdomen while the midwife inserted 

 one hand in the vagina to feel for the child. The 

 woman was tossed on a sheet only in difficult cases. 

 Slow expulsion of the afterbirth was treated by forc- 

 ing the mother to drink warm salty water to cause 

 vomiting. 



A new mother remained in bed from a few hours 

 to several days, taking care to avoid any drafts. Atole 

 was the food for the first days, after which she ate 

 normally. No bathing or changing of clothes was 

 allowed for the 40-day period of puerperio, or time 

 after childbirth. Inexplicably, Leon says then the 

 mother bathed in the tema^cal, an im])ossibility since 

 the Tarascans were, at least at this date, unacquaint- 

 ed with this custom. The husband did not cohabit 

 with his wife for some weeks for fear she suffer and 

 die from empacho. 



STATISTICAL DATA ON BIRTHS 



The municipal birth records of Tzintzuntzan 

 were examined from 1931, the first full year 

 of the municipio, through 1944, a period of 14 

 years. These records have been well kept, and 

 when checked against grown children appear to 

 be almost 100 percent accurate for live births. 

 Some stillbirths are entered, but these have been 

 disregarded since they represent but a small 

 fraction of the total number of this class. Until 

 1934 the data include a guess as to whether 

 the parents are Indians or Mestizos. Mode of 

 marriage of the parents is given: civil and 

 Church, civil only, or Church only. If the 

 parents are not civilly married, children are 

 not technically legitimate, though this means 

 very little. Among older parents there are quite 

 a few cases in which marriage by the Church 

 only is recorded. Almost all younger parents 

 have been married in both fashions. Very few 

 civil inarriages to the exclusion of Church mar- 

 riages are listed. Recorded data also include 

 the names and ages (largely guesswork) of the 

 parents and grandparents, number of previous 

 births to the parents, religion (invariably Cath- 

 olic), occupation of the parents (mothers al- 

 ways listed as "no occupation, on account of 

 her sex"), together with the names, nationality, 

 age, domicile, and occupation of two disinterest- 

 ed witnesses. 



Female births are more numerous than male 



births; for the 14-year period an average sex~ 

 ratio of 91.1 is indicated. The sex ratio of the 

 living population in 1945 was 85.8. This lower 

 ratio probably is due to more men than women 

 moving away from the village, and perhaps to 

 slightly greater female longevity. Male, fe- 

 male, and total births, together with the sex 

 ratio, are given in table 37. 



Total births for 1944, when checked against 

 the population of 1,231 recorded in the census 

 of February, 1945, indicate a crude birth rate 

 of 45.5. Official government figures for the cen- 



Table 37. — Total registered births in Tzintzuntzan, 

 1931-44 



sus of 1940 (1,077) and 1930 (1,003) are 

 probably somewhat smaller than reality. Sub- 

 sequent recliecks of our census added about 50 

 natnes overlooked on the first day. Adding this 

 rough correction to the 1940 census, and assum- 

 ing a population of 1,127, and figuring an aver- 

 age of 54.3 births for the 10-year period 1935- 

 44, a crude birth rate of 48.2 is indicated. If 

 the population for each year were calculated, 

 it appears that there would be a slight but hard- 

 ly significant downward slope in the birth rate 

 trend for the 14-year period under consider- 

 ation. 



A count of births for each month for the 

 14-year period gave the following totals: 



Month Births 



January 02 



February 78 



March. .' 61 



April 65 



May 70 



June 78 



