CHAPTER V

with the soil”), a slave girl who represented the goddess, wearing her red face-paint, large square headdress and variegated raiment. She was constantly guarded by three old women called her “mothers,” and was sedulously instructed in the dancing-school for the part she had to play. In all likelihood she was kept in complete ignorance of her impending fate. Day after day she danced, surrounded by the women of the community, who shook their long hair, and it was believed that the maize-crop