Also
she drinks only out of a special vessel, because any person who
should afterwards drink out of the same vessel would infallibly pine
away and die.
Among most tribes of North American Indians the custom was that
women in their courses retired from the camp or the village and
lived during the time of their uncleanness in special huts or
shelters which were appropriated to their use. There they dwelt
apart, eating and sleeping by themselves, warming themselves at
their own fires, and strictly abstaining from all communications
with men, who shunned them just as if they were stricken with the
plague.
Thus, to take examples, the Creek and kindred Indians of the United
States compelled women at menstruation to live in separate huts at
some distance from the village. There the women had to stay, at the
risk of being surprised and cut off by enemies. It was thought "a
most horrid and dangerous pollution" to go near the women at such
times; and the danger extended to enemies who, if they slew the
women, had to cleanse themselves from the pollution by means of
certain sacred herbs and roots.
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