236 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

a distance from the habitations a small hut is hastily made for her, wherein
she has to dwell until the menstrual flow is well over. She is visited only by
a female relative, her mother or maternal grandmother, who daily takes to
her the meagre fare customary under the circumstances. The girl has to lie
down as long as possible, eat as little as she can, and only of dried food.
The comestion, while in her impure State, of the flesh (especially of the head)
of any animal, fish or land game, that but lately enjoyed the sweets of life
could not but irritate its surviving fellows, which would not fail to resent so
grievous an insult by avoiding the traps, snares, arrows or bullets of all the
relatives of the guilty party. She must content herself with some bits of
dry fish and a few berries, and the greater is her abstinence from food the
longer and more enjoyable will be her after life.

While in that state of strict confinement, she is called a-sta, “she that
stays ina hole”, a term which seems to imply even more absolute seclusion
in primordial times, unless it be taken to mean that the girl is now so much
hidden from view that she is practically dead and buried. The word is the
equivalent of that by which the Chinese maiden is known among her own
people when, banished at twelve from all companionship, she becomes “‘the
girl who sits in the house”.

Nor is this all. By reason of the excessively malign influences whereof
She is possessed, the Déné girl is Strictly forbidden to walk in the beaten
tracks, go out to fetch her own fire-wood or water, bathe or even wash herself
in the streams and lakes, for fear she would cause the death of the fish or
prevent her people from taking any. Above all, she must avoid touching any-
thing belonging to man, especially his hunting implements, which would be
thereby defiled and entirely unfitted for the capture of game. She must keep
away from the tracks of the same; nay, she is debarred from even crossing the
trail whereon “the head of a deer, moose, beaver, and many other animals
have lately been carried, either on a sledge or on the back” 1. She must not
go near the places where fish-nets are set or beaver is being trapped, and in
Flearne’s time she could not even walk over the ice of the lakes and streams.
Is not this following the Mosaical code with a vengeance ?

The same seclusion, accompanied by identical observances and restrictions,
recurred with every following menstruation, even after marriage.

After her catamenial course, walking in the steps of her Jewish prototype,
the Déné virgin or sak-esta undergoes a mitigated seclusion. At night she
Sleeps in the partitioned space in the corner of the house, or close by the
pillow of her father®. She is carefully watched, and when going out she wears

" S. Hearne, op. cit., p. 315.

* “A teneza hada daughter, and she was a virgin. He made her pass every night quite
close to his pillow, for he was rearing her with the greatest care” (“Three Carrier Myths”, by
the writer; Trans. Can. Inst., vol. V, p. 28). Everybody knows that the myths of a people are
a perfect mirror representing to the life its past social habits.