Note 253.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF (continued 2)

Taboo is the most contagious of diseases. Mourning garb is its outward and visible sign, and a warning to all who would otherwise come into contact with the mourner. The veil in particular may be compared with the head-coverings and seclusion required of girls arriving at maturity. At that period they also are under taboo. Among the Eskimo, the tribes of British Columbia, many of the South American tribes and the Bantu tribes of Africa, and over a considerable area in the south of Asia, the Indian Ocean and Melanesia, adolescent girls are confined for a longer or shorter time where they cannot be seen, or kept covered if they go out of doors. They are very sensitive to the influence of the sun.253.1 But it is not merely that the sun would affect them; their very glance is deleterious. A Thlinkit girl wears a hat with long flaps, that her glance may not pollute the sky. Among the Tsetsaut it is believed that if she were to expose her face to the sun or the sky, rain would fall.253.2 So the Hupa grave-digger in California is under a taboo. He has come into contact with death, and is required after the funeral to carry a bough of Douglas spruce over his head, “that he may not by any chance glance at the sky or at any human being, thereby contaminating them.”253.3 On the island of Mabuiag, if a maturing girl’s own father see her, he will have bad luck in fishing, and probably smash his canoe the next time he goes in it.254.1 So far as I am aware, there is no intention in veiling a girl at puberty to disguise her so as to delude any spiritual foe. It is true that both she and the mourners at a death (including all who take part in the death-rites) are exposed to special dangers. That is because they are alike in a state of taboo. They are thus also dangerous to others. They must be secluded; or if they venture abroad they must be either covered or so garbed as to keep other persons at a distance.