MALLERY. | RELIGIOUS RITES. 5O5 
from the tree. It expressed the wish of the owner of the tree, that any thief touch- 
ing it might have a disease running right across his body, and remaining fixed there 
till he died. 
The ulcer taboo. This was made by burying in the ground some pieces of clam 
shell, and erecting at the spot three or four reeds, tied together at the top in a bunch 
like the head of aman. This was to express the wish and prayer of the owner that 
any thief might be laid down with ulcerous sores all over his body. 
The death taboo. This was made by pouring some oil into a small calabash, and 
Lurying it near the tree. The spot was marked by a little hillock of white sand. 
The thunder taboo, If aman wished that lightning might strike any who should 
steal from his land, he would plait some cocoanut leaflets in the form of a small 
square mat, and suspend it from a tree, with the addition of some white streamers 
of native cloth flying. A thief believed that if he trespassed, he, or some of his 
children, would be struck with lightning, or perhaps his own trees struck and 
blasted from the same cause. They were not, however, in the habit of talking 
about the effects of lightning. It was the thunder they thought did the mischief; 
hence they called that to which T have just referred the thunder taboo. 
SECTION .5. 
RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES. 
Many examples of masks, dance ornaments, and fetiches used in 
ceremonies are reported and illustrated in the several papers of Messrs. 
Cushing, Holmes, and Stevenson in the Second Annual Report of the 
Bureau of Ethnolegy. Paintings or drawings of many of them have 
been found on pottery, on shells, and on rocks. 
An admirable article by Mr. J. Walter Fewkes (b) on Tusayan Picto- 
graphs explains many of the petroglyphs of that region as depicting 
objects used in dances and ceremonies. 
Fig. 715 exhibits drawings of various masks used in dancing, the 
eharacters of which were obtained by Mr. G. K. Gilbert from rocks 
at Oakley springs and were explained to him.by Tubi, the chief of the 
Oraibi Pueblos. They are representations of masks as used by the 
Moki, Zuni, and Rio Grande Pueblos. 
Dr. W. H. Corbusier, U.S. Army, writing from Camp Verde, Arizona, 
kindly furnished the following account of Yuman ceremonies, in which 
the making of sand pictures was prominent: 
All the medicine men meet occasionally and with considerable ceremony ‘‘make 
medicine.” They went through the performance early in the summer of 1874 on the 
reservation for the purpose of averting the diseases with which the Indians were 
afflicted the summer previous. In the middle of one of the villages they made a 
round ramada, or house of boughs, some 10 feet in diameter, and under it, on the 
sand, illustrated the spirit land in a picture about 7 feet across, made in colors by 
sprinkling powdered leaves and grass, red clay, charcoal, and ashes on the smoothed 
sand. In the center was a round spot of red clay about 10 inches in diameter, and 
around it several successive rings of green and red alternately, each ring being an 
inch and ahalf wide. Projecting from the outer ring were four somewhat triangular- 
shaped figures, each one of which corresponded to one of the cardinal points of the 
compass, giving the whole the appearance of a Maltese cross, Around this cross and 
between its arms were the figures of men with their feet toward the center, some 
made of charcoal, with ashes for eyes and hair, others of red clay and ashes, ete. 
