supposed that some one has been in the room who has been bitten by a dog or a snake. He would have to be found and then to sa ve the life of the child he would have to wave some ashes over the heads of both child and mother—waving them four times.
Birthdays are not observed in Zuñi, but a kind of grouping by age there seems to be, for every four years an initiation into the kotikili is held and boys become eligible for this initiation some time after their first four-years age period, apparently towards the close of their second, i. e., they are not initiated before they are four and they may be initiated before they are eight. In the initiation ceremonial four is very prominent. The ceremonial lasts four days, days in which the initiate fasts from meat. As he passes between the lines of the twelve salimobi'ya, he is whipped[1] by each masked figure four times.
But even before the initiation the development of Zuñi children, and, in this case, of girls,[2] as well as boys, is attended to, ceremonially. During the watempla dances, purificatory dances of late winter and early spring, the masks known as the adoshlĕ and the suukĕ pay domiciliary visits upon refractory children. Into the disciplinary effect of these terrifying personages we need not go, noting only that four times they have to advance upon a house before its adult inmates stop beating upon their pans and drums to pretend to scare them away.
Into Zuñi marriage practises i. e., into a first marriage I have found no numeral obtrusion, but here my observations are by no means final. In the marriage of the widowed the favorite number does occur. Early in the morning after the couple has first slept together the second spouse gives to the remarried one something of value. This object with something belonging to himself or herself the remarried throws in the roadway. Whoever would pick these things up and appropriate them must first kick them four times with the left foot and then wave over the things a bit of cedar bark held in the left hand, waving it four times. Meanwhile the wedded pair must cut and plant their prayer plumes and stay continent,[3] four days for the deceased, and again cutting and planting the plumes, four days for themselves.
Immediately after the death of a spouse, the widowed has also planted plumes, again four days for the deceased and four days for himself or herself. Four days it takes the deceased to reach kothlu-
- ↑ Whipping four times figures in the restoration of one who has had a bad dream.
- ↑ Girls are seldom initiated into the kotikili. There are in it now four women and there were in it in 1902, Mrs. Stevenson reports, four, but the occurrence of that ubiquitous number is, in this case, I have been told, a mere fortuity.
- ↑ Four days before every plume planting and four days afterwards continence is required. The initiated, i. e., all the men and some of the women, plant plumes every moon and on many other ceremonial occasions.
