PUBERTY CUSTOMS. 241

hut erected for her, as was customary with the other tribes. One of the observ-
ances peculiar to the Hares was that, apart from the bonnet or hood proper
to her condition, she was made to wear two sticks crossed on her breasts.
She was to avoid breaking any rabbit bone, and for a whole month she had
to abstain from eating the heart and blood of all animals, as well as from
fish-roe and fat.

Among the Pacific and Southern Dénés.

The puberty customs of the Tscetsaut, that remnant of a Déné tribe now
stationed on Portland Inlet, vary somewhat from those above enumerated,
though they testify to the same dread of the malign forces inherent to men-
struation. According to Dr. Boas, when one of their girls reaches maturity,
she wears a neck-ring of crab-apple twigs, earrings of bone and a piece of
a rib around the neck, as amulets to secure good luck and a long life. But
the most important part of her apparel is the equivalent of the Jewish veil,
which seems to have been converted by that band into a large skin hat,
which comes down over the face. They claim that if she should expose her
face to the sun or to the sky, it would rain, an opinion which betrays a
notable deviation from the original notions of the Dénés.

This hat protects also her face against the fire, which must not strike
her skin, so that she has to wear skin mittens as a protection for the hands.
She keeps the tooth of an animal in her mouth to prevent her teeth from
getting hollow. For a whole year she must not see blood unless her face is
blackened; else she would get blind.

The hat is worn for two years, during which the girl lives in a hut by
herself, though she is permitted to see others. After that period, a man takes
the hat off from her head and throws it away’.

Among the Hupas, the customs attending the dawn of womanhood
betray a further derogation from the original observances, to the extent of
not only allowing, but prescribing baths in the rivers for persons having their
first catamenial course. These baths are accompanied by ceremonies, and the
event is the occasion of dances minutely described by Goddard‘. But even
there we have the enforced seclusion, which lasts ten days, the maidenly veil
of many strands, which are in that tribe of maple bark, the penitential absti-
nence, and the numberless precautions against touching the face or hair with
the hands. This last point implies, of course, the ceremonial scratcher, which

' Fr. Petitot calls it a capulet.
* Cf. Petitot, Traditions Indiennes du Canada Nord-Ouest, pp. 247—249.
’ Tenth Rep. on the N. W. Tribes of Canada, p. 45. Among the Carriers, the virginal
veil was taken off by the same aunt who had put it on the girl’s head.
* Op. cit., p. 53.
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