the
unlawful one. He admonishes her to confess, explaining to her how much
better the result will be, as he then can cure her with much greater
strength. Even if she confesses, she is only half through with her
trouble, because the shaman exacts heavy payment for the cure, from
$10 to $20. If she cannot pay now, she has to come back in a month,
and continue coming until she can settle her account. By rights, the
man should pay for her, but often he runs away and leaves her in the
lurch. Since the Indians have come in contact with the Mexicans this
happens quite often. When at length the money is paid and she has
confessed everything, there is nothing more for the shaman to do but
to give an account of it to the god's eye, and she goes to her home
absolved. One year afterward she has to come back and report, and,
should she in the meantime have made another slip, she has to pay
more. From all the cotton wads the shaman gets he may have girdles
and hair-ribbons made, which he eventually sells.

The custom related above is of interest as showing the forces employed
by ancient society to maintain the family intact. Fear of accidents,
illness or death, more even than the fine or anything else, keeps
the people from yielding too freely to the impulses of their senses.

The treatment accorded to the dead by these people, and their notions
regarding them, are, in the main, the same as those obtaining with the
tribes which I visited before them, but there are some new features
that are of interest. Here, for instance, near the head of the dead,
who lies stretched out on the ground in the house, the shaman places
a god's eye and three arrows; and at his feet another arrow. He sings
an incantation and smokes tobacco, though not on the dead, while the
widow makes yarn from some cotton, which she has first handed to the
shaman. When she has finished the yarn, she gives it to the shaman,
who tears it into two pieces of equal length, which he ties to the
arrow standing at the right-hand side of the man. One piece he rubs
over with charcoal; this is for the dead, and is tied lower down on
the arrow. He winds it in a ball, except the length which reaches from
the arrow to the middle of the body, where the ball is placed under
the dead man's clothes. The other thread the shaman holds in his left
hand, together with his pipe and plumes. After due incantations he
divides the white thread into pieces of equal length, as many as there
are