SWANTON] INDIAN TRIBES OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 353

 thirst. Dressed in breechcloths, their heads adorned with feathers,
 ribbons, red paint, and small gourds, they had to dance for six days
 in the temple, while fasting and without tasting a drop of water, led
 by their ephori, or disciplinarians. No female was allowed to ap-
 proach, although they had access to the ceremonial dances at the new-
 moon festivity."a
 Benjamin Paul was aware of such a ceremony, but could only say
 that the boys were taken into the temple and made to stay six days
 with nothing to eat, after which they danced about the fire until they
 fell down.
 Different from this was the solitary fast and confinement which
 each boy (and, it is said, each girl also) underwent in order to obtain
 a personal guardian spirit. Instead of going off into the solitudes
 the boy or girl is said to have been confined until he dreamed of the
 animal which was to become his helper. Benjamin Paul stated that
 his grandmother's helper was a wolf and that the process of obtain-
 ing such a helper was called nacdnxme'k or cd'nxmec, which prob-
 ably signifies "having supernatural power" or something similar.
 Another high-caste word for worship is nta'tcmi. This ancient re-
 ligion is said to have lasted until about sixty years ago, Benjamin
 Paul's great uncle having been the last person to be buried at Co'k-
 tangi. After that the Indians became Catholics and his grand-
 mother was the first to be married in the Catholic church at
 Charenton.
 Some of the Chitimacha personal names collected by the writer
 have totemic suggestions, but there are others in which it is wanting
 or obscured. Those recorded are the following: Tc/d'xkata, 'Blue-
 bird,'; Cd'mu-me'stin, White flower' (a woman's name);
 Tcim-ko'nic, Shouts-at-night '; Ki'ni, Screech-owl '; So-kaiitc7',
'Three-legged '; Vait'i-e'stmic, Pounding-up Ilex cassine '; Cuc-
k'd'pn, 'Wood-hauler'; to which the following may be added from
Gatschet: Na-ic Mesta', 'White-goose'; Wdms-ca, 'Catfish-mouth';
and KIne'xpc-kakxt, Beads-basket' (a woman's name).
 Belief in personal spirits practically assumes a belief in the exist-
ence of anthropomorphic beings in all kinds of natural objects, and,
indeed, we could have confidently affirmed as much without the most
elementary information regarding the religious ideas of these people.
We have, however, much more positive data. Besides the supreme
deity, Ku'tnahin, already referred to, who is also called Nete'xmec,
" Governor," and will be considered more at length in connection with
the myths, Gatschet learned of three beings, described to him as the
great devil, the little devil, and the last devil," one of whom he sur-
mises with probable correctness to have been the Jack o' Lantern.
 a Trans. Anthrop. Soc. Wash., II, 7, 1883.
 83220-Bull. 43-10--23