Section 3. Women tabooed at Menstruation and Childbirth.
IN GENERAL, we may say that the prohibition to use the vessels, garments,
and so forth of certain persons, and the effects supposed to follow an
infraction of the rule, are exactly the same whether the persons to whom the
things belong are sacred or what we might call unclean and polluted. As
the garments which have been touched by a sacred chief kill those who
handle them, so do the things which have been touched by a menstruous
women. An Australian blackfellow, who discovered that his wife had lain on
his blanket at her menstrual period, killed her and died of terror himself
within a fortnight. Hence Australian women at these times are forbidden
under pain of death to touch anything that men use, or even to walk on a
path that any man frequents. They are also secluded at childbirth, and all
vessels used by them during their seclusion are burned. In Uganda the pots
which a woman touches, while the impurity of childbirth or of menstruation
is on her, should be destroyed; spears and shields defiled by her touch are
not destroyed, but only purified. "Among all the Déné and most other
American tribes, hardly any other being was the object of so much dread
as a menstruating woman. As soon as signs of that condition made
themselves apparent in a young girl she was carefully segregated from all
but female company, and had to live by herself in a small hut away from the
gaze of the villagers or of the male members of the roving band. While in
that awful state, she had to abstain from touching anything belonging to
man, or the spoils of any venison or other animal, lest she would thereby
pollute the same, and condemn the hunters to failure, owing to the anger of
the game thus slighted. Dried fish formed her diet, and cold water, absorbed
through a drinking tube, was her only beverage. Moreover, as the very
sight of her was dangerous to society, a special skin bonnet, with fringes
falling over her face down to her breast, hid her from the public gaze, even
some time after she had recovered her normal state." Among the Bribri
Indians of Costa Rica a menstruous woman is regarded as unclean. The
only plates she may use for her food are banana leaves, which, when she
has done with them, she throws away in some sequestered spot; for were a
cow to find them and eat them, the animal would waste away and perish.
And she drinks out of a special vessel for a like reason; because if any one
drank out of the same cup after her, he would surely die. 1
Among many peoples similar restrictions are imposed on women in
childbed and apparently for similar reasons; at such periods women are
supposed to be in a dangerous condition which would infect any person or
thing they might touch; hence they are put into quarantine until, with the
recovery of their health and strength, the imaginary danger has passed
away. Thus, in Tahiti a woman after childbirth was secluded for a fortnight
or three weeks in a temporary hut erected on sacred ground; during the
time of her seclusion she was debarred from touching provisions, and had
to be fed by another. Further, if any one else touched the child at this
period, he was subjected to the same restrictions as the mother until the
ceremony of her purification had been performed. Similarly in the island of
Kadiak, off Alaska, a woman about to be delivered retires to a miserable
low hovel built of reeds, where she must remain for twenty days after the
birth of her child, whatever the season may be, and she is considered so
unclean that no one will touch her, and food is reached to her on sticks.
The Bribri Indians regard the pollution of childbed as much more dangerous
even than that of menstruation. When a woman feels her time approaching,
she informs her husband, who makes haste to build a hut for her in a lonely
spot. There she must live alone, holding no converse with anybody save
her mother or another woman. After her delivery the medicine-man purifies
her by breathing on her and laying an animal, it matters not what, upon her.
But even this ceremony only mitigates her uncleanness into a state
considered to be equivalent to that of a menstruous woman; and for a full
lunar month she must live apart from her housemates, observing the same
rules with regard to eating and drinking as at her monthly periods. The case
is still worse, the pollution is still more deadly, if she has had a miscarriage
or has been delivered of a stillborn child. In that case she may not go near
a living soul: the mere contact with things she has used is exceedingly
dangerous: her food is handed to her at the end of a long stick. This lasts
generally for three weeks, after which she may go home, subject only to
the restrictions incident to an ordinary confinement. 2
Some Bantu tribes entertain even more exaggerated notions of the virulent
infection spread by a woman who has had a miscarriage and has
concealed it. An experienced observer of these people tells us that the
blood of childbirth "appears to the eyes of the South Africans to be tainted
with a pollution still more dangerous than that of the menstrual fluid. The
husband is excluded from the hut for eight days of the lying-in period,
chiefly from fear that he might be contaminated by this secretion. He dare
not take his child in his arms for the three first months after the birth. But the
secretion of childbed is particularly terrible when it is the product of a
miscarriage, especially a concealed miscarriage. In this case it is not
merely the man who is threatened or killed, it is the whole country, it is the
sky itself which suffers. By a curious association of ideas a physiological
fact causes cosmic troubles!" As for the disastrous effect which a
miscarriage may have on the whole country I will quote the words of a
medicine-man and rain-maker of the Ba-Pedi tribe: "When a woman has
had a miscarriage, when she has allowed her blood to flow, and has
hidden the child, it is enough to cause the burning winds to blow and to
parch the country with heat. The rain no longer falls, for the country is no
longer in order. When the rain approaches the place where the blood is, it
will not dare to approach. It will fear and remain at a distance. That woman
has committed a great fault. She has spoiled the country of the chief, for
she has hidden blood which had not yet been well congealed to fashion a
man. That blood is taboo. It should never drip on the road! The chief will
assemble his men and say to them, `Are you in order in your villages?'
Some one will answer, `Such and such a woman was pregnant and we
have not yet seen the child which she has given birth to.' Then they go
and arrest the woman. They say to her, `Show us where you have hidden
it.' They go and dig at the spot, they sprinkle the hole with a decoction of
two sorts of roots prepared in a special pot. They take a little of the earth of
this grave, they throw it into the river, then they bring back water from the
river and sprinkle it where she shed her blood. She herself must wash
every day with the medicine. Then the country will be moistened again (by
rain). Further, we (medicine-men), summon the women of the country; we
tell them to prepare a ball of the earth which contains the blood. They bring
it to us one morning. If we wish to prepare medicine with which to sprinkle
the whole country, we crumble this earth to powder; at the end of five days
we send little boys and little girls, girls that yet know nothing of women's
affairs and have not yet had relations with men. We put the medicine in the
horns of oxen, and these children go to all the fords, to all the entrances of
the country. A little girl turns up the soil with her mattock, the others dip a
branch in the horn and sprinkle the inside of the hole saying, `Rain! rain!'
So we remove the misfortune which the women have brought on the roads;
the rain will be able to come. The country is purified! 3