o 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.
Hence it is easy to see that a girl who wears these portions of a
porcupine about her waist, will be delivered just as easily as the
animal. To make quite sure of this, if anybody happens to kill a
porcupine big with young while the girl is undergoing her period of
separation, the foetus is given to her, and she lets it slide down
between her shirt and her body so as to fall on the ground like an
infant.[122] Here the imitation of childbirth is a piece of homoeopathic
or imitative magic designed to facilitate the effect which it
simulates.[123]

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Thompson Indians of British
Columbia.]

Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia, when a girl attained
puberty, she was at once separated from all the people. A conical hut of
fir branches and bark was erected at some little distance from the other
houses, and in it the girl had to squat on her heels during the day.
Often a deep circular hole was dug in the hut and the girl squatted in
the hole, with her head projecting above the surface of the ground. She
might quit the hut for various purposes in the early morning, but had
always to be back at sunrise. On the first appearance of the symptoms
her face was painted red all over, and the paint was renewed every
morning during her term of seclusion. A heavy blanket swathed her body
from top to toe, and during the first four days she wore a conical cap
made of small fir branches, which reached below the breast but left an
opening for the face. In her hair was fastened an implement made of
deer-bone with which she scratched herself. For the first four days she
might neither wash nor eat, but a little water was given her in a
birch-bark cup painted red, and she sucked up the liquid through a tube
made out of the leg of a crane, a swan, or a goose, for her lips might
not touch the surface of the water. After the four days she was allowed,
during the rest of the period of isolation, to eat, to wash, to lie
down, to comb her hair, and to drink of streams and springs. But in
drinking at these sources she had still to use her tube, otherwise the
spring would dry up. While her seclusion lasted she performed by night
various ceremonies, which were supposed to exert a beneficial influence
on her future life. For example, she ran as fast as she could,