hich
the boys afterward ate.

The host always asks his guests to submit for four days longer to
the restrictions that are necessary to insure the efficiency of the
dancing. These refer mainly to abstinence from mescal and women,
and are conscientiously observed for five days before and five days
after the occasion, by the family who arranges the dance. The shaman,
on whom the obligation to observe these formalities is greater than
on anyone else, may have to officiate at another mitote before the
time limit for the first has expired, therefore much of his time is
spent in privations.

After the feast, the tapexte, that is to say, the matting, which
constituted the top of the altar, is hung up in a tree to be used
again the next year. The trees that have formed the bower near the
altar are left undisturbed. The ceremonial objects are placed in
the trees for four or five days, and then put into a basket which is
hung in some cave. At Pueblo Viejo no more tribal mitotes are given,
and it seems that no family anywhere makes more than one a year.

When a newly married couple wish to give their first mitote, they
go away from the house for a month. Both of them bathe and wash
their clothes, and impose restrictions upon themselves, sleeping
most of the time. When awake they talk little to each other, and
think constantly of the gods. Only the most necessary work is done;
he brings wood and she prepares the food, consisting of tortillas,
which must not be toasted so long that they lose their white colour. A
thin white gruel, called atole, made from ground corn, is also eaten,
but no deer-meat, nor fish with the exception of a small kind called
mitshe. Neither salt nor beans are allowed. The blankets they wear
must also be white. During all this time they must not cut flowers or
bathe or smoke; they must not get angry at each other, and at night
they must sleep on different sides of the fire.

Fasting and abstinence form an integral part of the religion of these
people. A man who desires to become a shaman must keep strictly to
a diet of white tortillas and atole for five years. His drink is
water, and that only once a day, in the afternoon. The people here
once fasted for two months, in order to aid General Porfirio Diaz
to become President of Mexico; and they told me that they were soon
going to subject themselves to similar privations in order to help
another official whom they wanted to remain in his position.

Fastin