horse, "a piece of calico," or the like. Throughout the period of his initiation the novice was not permitted to go near a woman's menstrual lodge nor might he allow anyone to know that he was learning; that implied that he should not practise until the end of the novitiate period, usually two years, sometimes four. When at length he began to practise his success depended on his ability to develop dreams and visions.
While the Siʼatcokam can induct any young man into the mysteries of the order, that man's son can not inherit his father's profession.
Legerdemain
The Makai were intrusted with the important duty of securing supernatural aid to insure good crops. One method of procedure was to gather the people in the large lodge and have some one bring in an olla filled with earth. This the Makai stirred with a willow stick and placed before a clear fire, where it stood all night while rain songs were being sung. At dawn the olla was emptied and was found to contain wheat instead of earth. Four grains were given to each one present, to be buried at the corners of the fields or the four grains together at the center.
For a consideration the Makai would go to a wheat field and perform rites which he assured the owner would result in a heavy yield of wheat. After rolling and smoking a cigarette at each corner of the field, he would go to the center of it and bury a stick (âʼmĭna) 3 or 4 inches long.
To cause an abundance of melons and squashes, the Makai entered the field and took from his mouth—or, as his followers supposed, from the store of magic power in his body—a small melon or squash. The object was partially covered with hardened mud, symbolic of the productive earth. The rite was performed at a time when no melons or squashes had yet appeared, and it is supposed that he obtained the "magic" melon by stripping the outer leaves from the growing end of young vines. This was buried at the root of a growing plant to insure a prolific yield.
Again, the germination and growth of wheat were sometimes imitated by concealing several grains of wheat in the hair and shaking them down upon the soil. Then by a dextrous manipulation of a previously prepared series of young wheat shoots the growth was represented up to the point where a stalk 2 feet in length was
from the woods: and there they taught them to form certain figures on tablets, and when perfect in these, they were taught others, as children in our schools are taught to write. . . . But their most usual device was to hold up in their hands some little tablets of wood made with great labour, for want of iron tools of mesquite, or another hard wood called Una de Gato, on which were painted some grotesque figures, affirmed to be the true copy of the table, which the visiting spirit left with them at his departure to heaven; and these figures were the same which the Loretto professors [medicine-men] taught the boys at their private academy." Venegas, History of California, I, 98, 100.
