[121] Among the Tinneh Indians of the middle Yukon valley,
in Alaska, the period of the girl's seclusion lasts exactly a lunar
month; for the day of the moon on which the symptoms first occur is
noted, and she is sequestered until the same day of the next moon. If
the season is winter, a corner of the house is curtained off for her use
by a blanket or a sheet of canvas; if it is summer, a small tent is
erected for her near the common one. Here she lives and sleeps. She
wears a long robe and a large hood, which she must pull down over her
eyes whenever she leaves the hut, and she must keep it down till she
returns. She may not speak to a man nor see his face, much less touch
his clothes or anything that belongs to him; for if she did so, though
no harm would come to her, he would grow unmanly. She has her own dishes
for eating out of and may use no other; at Kaltag she must suck the
water through a swan's bone without applying her lips to the cup. She
may eat no fresh meat or fish except the flesh of the porcupine. She may
not undress, but sleeps with all her clothes on, even her mittens. In
her socks she wears, next to the skin, the horny soles cut from the feet
of a porcupine, in order that for the rest of her life her shoes may
never wear out. Round her waist she wears a cord to which are tied the
heads of femurs of a porcupine; because of all animals known to the
Tinneh the porcupine suffers least in parturition, it simply drops its
young and continues to walk or skip about as if nothing had happened.
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