and rather sickly,
would always have a little fever, and would lie perpetually in their
hammocks. As for the women, the _marake_ keeps them from going to sleep,
renders them active, alert, brisk, gives them strength and a liking for
work, makes them good housekeepers, good workers at the stockade, good
makers of _cachiri_. Every one undergoes the _marake_ at least twice in
his life, sometimes thrice, and oftener if he likes. It may be had from
the age of about eight years and upward, and no one thinks it odd that a
man of forty should voluntarily submit to it."[152] Similarly the
Indians of St. Juan Capistrano in California used to be branded on some
part of their bodies, generally on the right arm, but sometimes on the
leg also, not as a proof of manly fortitude, but because they believed
that the custom "added greater strength to the nerves, and gave a better
pulse for the management of the bow." Afterwards "they were whipped with
nettles, and covered with ants, that they might become robust, and the
infliction was always performed in summer, during the months of July and
August, when the nettle was in its most fiery state. They gathered small
bunches, which they fastened together, and the poor deluded Indian was
chastised, by inflicting blows with them upon his naked limbs, until
unable to walk; and then he was carried to the nest of the nearest and
most furious species of ants, and laid down among them, while some of
his friends, with sticks, kept annoying the insects to make them still
more violent. What torments did they not undergo! What pain! What
hellish inflictions! Yet their faith gave them power to endure all
without a murmur, and they remained as if dead. Having undergone these
dreadful ordeals, they were considered as invulnerable, and believed
that the arrows of their enemies could no longer harm them."[153] Among
the Alur, a tribe inhabiting the south-western region of the upper Nile,
to bury a man in an ant-hill and leave him there for a while is the
regular treatment for insanity.[154]

[In such cases the beating or stinging was originally a purification; at
a later time it is interpreted as a test of courage and endurance.]

In like manner it is probable that beating or scourging as a religious
or ceremonial rite was originally a mode of purification. It was meant
to wipe off and drive away a dangerous contagion, whether personified as
demoniacal or not, which was supposed to be adhering physically,