Note 233 — Chapter XVI · CEREMONIALS AND RITUALS
Reading edition
“Whenever anyone is being named anew, or assuming a new personality or office he is invariably sprinkled or washed that he be cleanly revealed and the better recommended in his new guise and character to the gods and spirits invoked for the occasion.”—Cushing, Thirteenth Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnology, p. 335.
Hair-washing is an indispensable preliminary of almost all Pueblo ceremonials. Hair-clipping of boys has been almost unknown. When, for any reason it was done, the cuttings were burned; if thrown out, it was thought that health and fortune had been scattered to the four winds. But now that the Indian children are sent to American schools in distant cities, one sees many boys and young men with the familiar “military cut.”