[404.] A maid or woman during the period of her catamenia became sacred or taboo to all men and ill persons; it was therefore dangerous to have her around; her sacredness or taboo was infectious.
[405.] This is an abbreviated form of the name Ganyăʼgwaiʻheʹgōwā, the great monster-bear.
[406.] This denotes the spike of a flowering plant.
[407.] This was an underhanded method of ascertaining whether a person lying near a fire was sound asleep or not; it was practiced chiefly by wicked persons in order to injure other persons.
[408.] These perils barring a path are employed in a number of other stories. The same monsters are not always mentioned, but their common provenance seems to be indicated, nevertheless.
[409.] This human skin flayed off whole is an example of the methods of torture practiced by the ancestors of the story tellers. It was believed that wizards and sorcerers could remove the flesh-body from the skin without destroying the life of the victim, which then was supposed to animate the empty skin. These skins retained the powers of the body and were usually called “a pouch.” This retaining of life by these skins, flayed whole, is mentioned in the Odyssey of Homer, where he speaks of the slaughter of the cows of the Sun. In the native conception this was regarded as a refined species of slavery.
[410.] It was customary in some families making pretensions to sorcery to conceal the child who had been born with a caul. This was done in such manner that no one other than one of the nearest of the child’s kin should be charged with the wardship of the hidden child, and so should have access exclusively to the initiate. One of the means employed in shielding the initiate from the view of other persons was to strew carefully about the place of concealment cat-tail flag down in such wise that any displacement of it would indicate intrusion by some unauthorized person. Thus is derived the epithet “down-fended,” or “warded by down.” Secondarily, it may have meant “mat-warded,” because mats were in some instances made from this kind of flag. (See 21st Ann. Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., p. 127.)
[411.] This is literally what the native term signifies. [[811]]
[412.] It was believed, and so reported traditionally, that usually the arrow of a sorcerer could not be removed from a wound except by its owner without injuring the arrow.
[413.] This is the literal meaning of the native term, and was the name of a ceremonial feast, the virtues of which were believed to be rooted in the fact of the complete consumption of the food offered by those who had been invited to eat up what was set before them. It was permissible for such a guest, however, to pay another to eat up what he himself or herself was not able to devour, for if anything of the feast should be left over the purpose of the feast would be defeated—by the malign influence of hostile sorcerers.