account of their reputation for impurity that the women generally live
isolated. In every house they have an apartment reserved for them, and
they never eat at the same table as the men. For the same reason they
are excluded from all religious ceremonies. They may only be present at
family ceremonies, but without ever officiating in them."[218]

[Dread and seclusion of menstruous women among the Indians of South and
Central America.]

The Guayquiries of the Orinoco think that when a woman has her courses,
everything upon which she steps will die, and that if a man treads on
the place where she has passed, his legs will immediately swell up.[219]
Among the Guaraunos of the same great river, women at their periods are
regarded as unclean and kept apart in special huts, where all that they
need is brought to them.[220] In like manner among the Piapocos, an
Indian tribe on the Guayabero, a tributary of the Orinoco, a menstruous
woman is secluded from her family every month for four or five days. She
passes the time in a special hut, whither her husband brings her food;
and at the end of the time she takes a bath and resumes her usual
occupations.[221] So among the Indians of the Mosquito territory in
Central America, when a woman is in her courses, she must quit the
village for seven or eight days. A small hut is built for her in the
wood, and at night some of the village girls go and sleep with her to
keep her company. Or if the nights are dark and jaguars are known to be
prowling in the neighbourhood, her husband will take his gun or bow and
sleep in a hammock near her. She may neither handle nor cook food; all
is prepared and carried to her. When the sickness is over, she bathes in
the river, puts on clean clothes, and returns to her household
duties.[222] Among the Bri-bri Indians of Costa Rica a girl at her first
menstruation retires to a hut built for the purpose in the forest, and
there she must stay till she has been purified by a medicine-man, who
breathes on her and places various objects, such as feathers, the beaks
of birds, the teeth of beasts, and so forth, upon her body. A married
woman at her periods remains in the house with her husband, but she is
reckoned unclean (_bukuru_) and must avoid all intimate relations with
him. She uses for plates only banana leaves, which, when she has done
with them, she throws away in a sequestered spot; for should a cow find
and eat them, the animal would waste away and per