CATAMENIA.

§ 97. The sexual peculiarity was considered as "Wakan´daʇa´¢icaⁿ," pertaining to Wakanda. In the myth of the Rabbit and the Black Bears, Mactciñge, the Rabbit, threw a piece of the Black Bear chief against his grandmother, who had offended him, thereby causing her to have the catamenia. From that time women have been so affected. Among the Omahas and Ponkas the woman makes a different fire for four days, dwelling in a small lodge, apart from the rest of the household, even in cold weather. She cooks and eats alone, telling no one of her sickness, not even her husband. Grown people do not fear her, but children are caused to fear the odor which she is said to give forth. If any eat with her they become sick in the chest, very lean, and their lips become parched in a circle about two inches in diameter. Their blood grows black. Children vomit. On the fourth or fifth day, she bathes herself, and washes her dishes, etc. Then she can return to the household. Another woman who is similarly affected can stay with her in the small lodge, if she knows the circumstances. During this period, the men will neither lie nor eat with the woman; and they will not use the same dish, bowl, and spoon. For more than ten years, and since they have come in closer contact with the white people, this custom of refusing to eat from the same dish, etc., has become obsolete. Dougherty stated that in the young Omaha female, catamenia and consequent capability for child-bearing, took place about the twelfth or thirteenth year, and the capacity to bear children seemed to cease about the fortieth year. This agrees in the main with what the writer has learned about the age of puberty (§ [80]) and the law of widows (§ [98]). La Flèche said that the change of life in a woman occurs perhaps at forty years of age, and sometimes a little beyond that age.