Boscana states that the young were instructed to love truth, to do good, and to venerate old age.[592] At an early age they were placed under the protection of a tutelar divinity, which was supposed to take the form of some animal. To discover the particular beast which was to guide his future destinies, the child was intoxicated,[593] and for three or four days kept without food of any kind. During this period he was continually harassed and questioned, until, weak from want of food, crazed with drink and importunity, and knowing that the persecution would not cease until he yielded, he confessed to seeing his divinity, and described what kind of brute it was. The outline of the figure was then molded in a paste made of crushed herbs, on the breast and arms of the novitiate. This was ignited and allowed to burn until entirely consumed, and thus the figure of the divinity remained indelibly delineated in the flesh. Hunters, before starting on an expedition, would beat their faces with nettles to render them clear-sighted. A girl, on arriving at the age of puberty, was laid upon a bed of branches placed over a hole, which had been previously heated, where she was kept with very little food for two or three days. Old women chanted songs, and young women danced round her at intervals during her purification. In the vicinity of San Diego the girl is buried all but her head, and the ground above her is beaten until she is in a profuse perspiration. This is continued for twenty-four hours, the patient being at intervals during this time taken out and washed, and then reimbedded. A feast and dance follow.[594]

When the missionaries first arrived in this region, they found men dressed as women and performing women's duties, who were kept for unnatural purposes. From their youth up they were treated, instructed, and used as females, and were even frequently publicly married to the chiefs or great men.[595]

AMUSEMENTS.

Gambling and dancing formed, as usual, their principal means of recreation. Their games of chance differed little from those played farther north. That of guessing in which hand a piece of wood was held, before described, was played by eight, four on a side, instead of four. Another game was played by two. Fifty small pieces of wood, placed upright in a row in the ground, at distances of two inches apart, formed the score. The players were provided with a number of pieces of split reed, blackened on one side; these were thrown, points down, on the ground, and the thrower counted one for every piece that remained white side uppermost; if he gained eight he was entitled to another throw. If the pieces all fell with the blackened side up they counted also. Small pieces of wood placed against the upright pegs, marked the game. They reckoned from opposite ends of the row, and if one of the players threw just so many as to make his score exactly meet that of his opponent, the former had to commence again. Throwing lances of reed through a rolling hoop was another source of amusement. Professional singers were employed to furnish music to a party of gamblers. An umpire was engaged, whose duty it was to hold the stakes, count the game, prevent cheating, and act as referee; he was also expected to supply wood for the fire.

When they were not eating, sleeping, or gambling, they were generally dancing; indeed, says Father Boscana, "such was the delight with which they took part in their festivities, that they often continued dancing day and night, and sometimes entire weeks." They danced at a birth, at a marriage, at a burial; they danced to propitiate the divinity, and they thanked the divinity for being propitiated by dancing. They decorated themselves with shells and beads, and painted their bodies with divers colors. Sometimes head-dresses and petticoats of feathers were worn, at other times they danced naked. The women painted the upper part of their bodies brown. They frequently danced at the same time as the men, but seldom with them. Time was kept by singers, and the rattling of turtle-shells filled with pebbles. They were good actors, and some of their character-dances were well executed; the step, however, like their chanting, was monotonous and unvarying. Many of their dances were extremely licentious, and were accompanied with obscenities too disgusting to bear recital. Most of them were connected in some way with their superstitions and religious rites.[596]

These people never wandered far from their own territory, and knew little or nothing of the nations lying beyond their immediate neighbors. Mr Reid relates that one who traveled some distance beyond the limits of his own domain, returned with the report that he had seen men whose ears descended to their hips; then he had met with a race of Lilliputians; and finally had reached a people so subtly constituted that they "would take a rabbit, or other animal, and merely with the breath, inhale the essence; throwing the rest away, which on examination proved to be excrement."

CUSTOMS AND SUPERSTITIONS.

They had a great number of traditions, legends, and fables. Some of these give evidence of a powerful imagination; a few are pointed with a moral; but the majority are puerile, meaningless, to us at least, and filled with obscenities. It is said that, in some parts, the Southern Californians are great snake-charmers, and that they allow the reptiles to wind themselves about their bodies and bite them, with impunity.

Feuds between families are nursed for generations; the war is seldom more than one of words, however, unless a murder is to be avenged, and consists of mutual vituperations, and singing obscene songs about each other. Friends salute by inquiries after each other's health. On parting one says 'I am going,' the other answers 'go.'

They are very superstitious, and believe in all sorts of omens and auguries. An eclipse frightens them beyond measure, and shooting stars cause them to fall down in the dust and cover their heads in abject terror. Many of them believe that, should a hunter eat meat or fish which he himself had procured, his luck would leave him. For this reason they generally hunt or fish in pairs, and when the day's sport is over, each takes what the other has killed. Living as they do from hand to mouth, content to eat, sleep, and dance away their existence, we cannot expect to find much glimmering of the simpler arts or sciences among them.