528 MEDICINE-MEN OF THE APACHE. 
with certain feathers, and a gem of chalchihuit] in the middle of 
them.” ! 
The third festival of Tlaloc was celebrated in the sixth month, which 
would about correspond to our 6th of June.? But there was another 
festival in honor of the Tlaloe, which seems very hard to understand. 
A full description is given by Bancroft.* To celebrate this it was incum- 
bent upon the priests to cut and carry to the temples bundles of the 
tule, which were woven into a sacred mat, after which there was a cere- 
monial procession to a tule swamp in which all bathed. 
The Aztecs, like the Apache, had myths showing that they sprang 
originally from a reed swamp. There was an Aztec god, Napatecutli, 
who was the god of the tule and of the mat-makers.* This rush was 
also strewn as part of several of their religious ceremonies. 
Fosbrooke® has this to say aboutcertain ceremoniesin connection with 
the churches in Europe: “At certain seasons the Choir was strewed with 
hay,at others with sand. On Easter sabbath with ivy-leaves; at other 
times with rushes.” He shows that hay was used at Christmas and 
the vigil of All Saints, at Pentecost, Athelwold’s Day, Assumption of 
the Blessed Virgin, and Ascension, ete. 
The Mexican populace played a game closely resembling our “blind 
man’s buff” in their seventeenth month, which was called Tititl] and 
corresponded to the winter solstice. In this game, called “nechichiqua- 
vilo,” men and boys ran through the streets hitting every one whom 
they met with small bags or nets (“‘taleguillas 6 redecillas”) filled with 
tule powder or fine paper (‘Ilenas de flor de las espadanas 6 de algunos 
papeles rotos”).° 
The same thing is narrated by other early Spanish writers upon 
Mexico. 
In the myths of Guatemala it is related that there were several dis- 
tinct generations of men. The first were made of wood, without heart 
or brains, with worm-eaten feet and hands. The second generation 
was an improvement upon this, and the women are represented as made 
of tule. ‘Las mugeres fueron hechas de corazon de espadana.”? 
Picart, enumerating the tree gods of the Romans, says that they had 
deified ‘les Roseaux pour les Rivieres.”? 
GENERAL USE OF THE POWDER AMONG INDIANS. 
This very general dissemination among the Indians of the American 
continent of the sacred use of the powder of the tule, of images, idols, 
or sacrificial cakes made of such prehistoric foods, certainly suggests 
'Clavigero, History of Mexico, Philadelphia, 1817, vol. 2, p. 101. 
2“ They strewed the temple in a curious way with rushes.”—1bid., p. 78. 
*Native Races, vol. 3, pp. 334-343. 
4Sahagun, in Kingsborough, vol. 7, p. 16. 
5 British Monachism, London, 1817, p. 289. 
6 Kingsborough, vol. 7, p. 83, from Sahagun. 
7 Ximenez, Guatemala, Translated by Scherzer, p. 13. 
Cérémonies et Cotitumes, ete., vol. 1, p. 27. 
