230 



INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY PUBLICATION NO. 6 



birth to, and the approximate ages at time of 

 death of deceased children. Table 40 shows 

 the results of this survey. The 70 women have 

 given birth to 354 children, an average of 5.0 

 per woman. The highest number of births per 



Table 39. — Comparative age at marriage of Tarascans 

 and Mestizos ' 



Table 40. — Fertility of Tzintzuntzan women 



' This table is compiled from the list of parents with 

 children taken from marriage and birth records in the presi- 

 dencia. With several exceptions they are the parents of 

 children listed in table 38. Age at marriage given in table 

 45 is that of all recorded marriages without regard to race, 

 for a 6-year period. 



woman is 13 and the lowest 1. Of these chil- 

 dren, 274 are either living or reached maturity 

 (18 years of age or older) before death, giving 

 an average of 3.9 per woman. Eighty died in 

 infancy or before reaching maturity, an average 

 of 1.1 per woman. (Table 50, page 271, reveals 

 that nearly half of all children born die during 

 the first five years of life. This indicates that 

 the average number of births per woman is 

 considerably higher than 5.0. Particularly in 

 the case of older women there is a tendency to 

 overlook children who died in infancy.) In- 

 fertility of women seems to be relatively rare. 

 Five women were recorded who, after 12 or 

 more years of married life, had given birth to 

 no children, and who were believed to have had 

 no miscarriages. 



Infanticide occurs occasionally, though it is 

 apparently not common. One unmarried mother 

 is said to have dashed out the brains of her 

 new-born child against the house wall, while 

 a married mother is said to have thrown her 



' 274 living children. 

 ' 80 deceased children. 



infant to the hogs "in order to be free of the 

 nuisance." Much speculation surrounds such 

 subjects, and accurate statistical information is 

 unobtainable. 



INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD 



NAMES 



The new infant's social and religious partic- 

 ipation in the life of the community begins 

 from a few days to a month after its birth, when 

 the baptismal godparents are selected and the 

 baptism carried out. Forty days after birth, 

 when the mother makes her official exit from 

 confinement, the parents and godparents again go 

 to the church for the presentation. Descriptions 

 of these ceremonies are given in the discussion 

 of other types of godparent relationships. At 

 baptism first consideration must be given to the 

 naming of the new child. In other parts of Mex- 

 ico in pre-Conquest times a horoscope was cast 

 to determine the fate of the child and to deter- 

 mine a suitable name. This custom appears to 

 have been lacking among the Tarascans; in any 

 case, there is no modern trace in the form of 

 nagualistic beliefs such as survived in Oaxaca 

 and other parts of Mexico. The belief, or per- 

 haps better, saying, that children born on Tues- 

 days {Maries) will be martyrs (mdrlires) ap- 

 pears to be Old World alliteration. No indig- 

 enous given names survive in Tzintzuntzan, 

 though a few Tarascan surnames are found. 

 Nombres de Pila, baptismal names, are often 



