Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/603

 the time set for the hunt a single rabbit is killed and its blood smeared on the legs of the Chakwena—to be rubbed off in the hunt against the plants she brushes through. For failure to catch a rabbit in the chase, four times a man or a “god” is struck, once on each arm and each leg. Four times the rabbits are run out from the surrounded areas, four times before the hunt turns into a secular and comparatively individualistic activity.

The hunt over, the Chakwena retires to one of the kewitsine or sacred club-houses, where for four days she lies in on a warmed-up sand-bed as would a woman in her confinement, and where she is taken care of by the woman who expects by this rite of imitative magic to conceive the offspring she desires. At the close of the fourth day the would-be mother receives from the Chakwena the two ears of corn she has carried in the hunt and gives in turn to the Chakwena two other ears—four ears of corn figuring in that give and take.

There are other ways to promote conception, but in this connection I need refer only to the conception of twins or rather to the means taken to inhibit it. The woman who eats of the wafer bread her husband brings back with him from his deer hunt will bear twins—since the deer have twins—unless the bread is passed around the rung of her house ladder four times.

In a real confinement the period set for it is, as in the case of the mock confinement of the Chakwena, four days, or it may be eight days or ten or twelve—whatever the familial practise—and (this is a fact of great interest, I think) any departure from the set practise means that the mother will “dry up,” get thin and die.

Were a hemorrhage to set in through the cord of the infant, it is