766 BUREAIJ 01? AMlerRlCAN BTHNOLOGY iBOll. iW 



thing bad was going to happen to the individual, or that people 

 were talking about him, or that a feast was to take place. 



The first acorns, and apparently the first fruits, gathered were 

 not eaten, nor was the first ripe corn or the corn in a field struck by 

 lightning. The first fish caught in a weir was not eaten but laid down 

 beside it, so that a great quantity of fish would come into it with the 

 next tide. It was thought that if the first fish caught in such a 

 weir were thrown into hot water, no other fish would be caught. 

 After eating bear meat one drank from a different shell from that 

 ordinarily used, so that he would not fall sick. After a man had 

 lost his wife, a woman her husband, or either a relative, the survivors 

 would not eat corn which had been sowed by the deceased or corn from 

 the land the deceased was wont to sow. They would give it to someone 

 else or have it destroyed. After attending a burial, a person bathed 

 and abstained for some time from eating fish. Before tilling a field 

 an ancient ceremony was recited to the shaman (or perhaps under his 

 leadership). Prayer was offered — that is, a formula was repeated — 

 over the first corn, and when the corncrib was opened a formula was 

 recited over the first flour. A ceremony accompanied with formulae 

 was performed with laurel when chestnuts (?) and palmetto berries 

 were gathered; wild fruits were not eaten until formulae had been 

 repeated over them, but perhaps this applied only to the first fruits 

 of the season. Apparently corn from a newly broken field was 

 not eaten, but it is hard to imagine that this law was absolute. 

 Unless prayers had been offered to the "spirit" by a doctor no one 

 was allowed to approach the corncrib or open it. Some ceremony is 

 mentioned as having taken place early in the season, in which six old 

 men ate a pot of "fritters." 



There were many hunting taboos. When a hunting party was 

 preparing to set out, the chief had formulae repeated over tobacco, 

 and when the hunting ground was reached, all of the arrows were 

 laid together and the medicine man repeated other formulae over 

 them. It was usual to give the medicine man the first deer that 

 was killed. Formulae were also recited before they went to fish 

 in a lake, and afterward the shaman prayed over the fish that had 

 been caught and was given half. The first fish caught, however, was, 

 after the usual formulae, placed in the storehouse. Pare j a also men- 

 tions a kind of hunting ceremony performed by kicking with the feet, 

 probably some form of sympathetic magic, and it appears that not 

 a great deal of flesh was eaten immediately after (he hunt for fear 

 that no more animals would be killed. It was also thought that no 

 more game would be killed if the lungs and liver of an animal were 

 thrown into cold water in preparation for cooking. If a hunter 

 pierced an animal with an arrow without killing it, he repeated a 



