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5 215? Among the Indians all the most sound offices were filled by men who had been in infancy or childhood set apart for the purpose. It would seem that some sons had a hereditary right to certain offices, or were devoted by their parents previous to their birth, because the priest was previously informal so as to he present immediately after the birth of the child, that, if a son, he might give him a kind of purifying or consecrating drink, before he was put to the breast. The child at that age, being unable to fast, the parents fasted for him seven days, eating nothing but a certain root which they partook of only once in twenty four hours, a little after sunset. Such sons were afterwards trained up with peculiar care.

As the mother was liable to her monthly courses, and of course to the uncleanness accompanying them, the son thus devoted to God, was soon taken from her, or rather, by her delivered up to his grandmother, or some aged matron to be preserved pure. This child was now not allowed to wander about at pleasure like other children. He was never allowed to eat in a neighboring house, lest he should eat food which some female in her uncleanness had touched. or which some other person, in some way unclean, had defiled. This son, though under particular care of the matron above mentioned, was under the general instruction^ & direction of the priest to whom he was committed at his birth; and who spent frequent days of fasting, and nights of watchfulness, with him, as he was growing up. These days and nights he occupied in teaching his pupil, the various duties which would devolve on him in the discharge of his contemplated office {A child designed for the office of chief speaker in war (ska li lo ski) must never eat frogs, nor the breast of tongue of any animal.}
But more generally sons were not devoted to sacred offices till they were nine or ten years old. In this care the priest to whose care a son was committed took him very early in the morning onto a mountain ^gave him the purifying drink and bid him fix eyes on the place where the sun was to rise, so as to catch the first rays of that luminary, and then follow it with his eyes till its last rays died away in the west. And thus, it is said, he did, and - crossed out not turning his eyes from the sun during the whole day.