When an addition is expected in the family the chief preparation of the woman is to get ready a quantity of beer, calling on her friends to help her, while the husband goes to look for the shaman.  When she feels her time is approaching, she retires to some lonely spot, as she is too bashful to bear her child while others are about.  She tightens her girdle around her waist, and bears her child sitting up, holding on to something above her, like the branch of a tree.  After the little stranger has arrived the husband may bring her a jar with warm water from which she occasionally drinks.  He also digs a hole, in which, after he has gone, she buries the placenta, placing stones on top of the place on account of the dogs.  The umbilical cord is cut with a sharp reed or a sharp-edged piece of obsidian, but never with a knife, for in that case the child would become a murderer and could never be a shaman.  I once asked a Tarahumare where he was born, expecting him to give me the name of some ranch; I was rather amused when he pointed to a big stone a little farther on along the slope.  That was his birthplace.

The mother may lie down for that day, but the following morning she works as usual, as if nothing had been the matter with her.  The husband does not work for three days, because he thinks his axe would break, or the horns of his ox would fall off, or he would break a leg.  The third day he takes a bath.

When the baby is three days old the shaman comes to cure it.  A big fire is made of corn-cobs, the little one is placed on a blanket, and with the father’s assistance the shaman carries it, if it is a boy, three times through the smoke to the four cardinal points, making the ceremonial circuit and finally raising it upward.  This is done that the child may grow well and be successful in life, that is, in raising corn.  Then the shaman takes a burning corn-cob from the fire and with the charred end makes three parallel lines lengthwise over the child’s head and three across them.  He also sprinkles tesvino on the head and other vital parts of the body to make them strong, and cures the umbilical cord.  He may, too, anoint the child with the fat of the rattlesnake mixed with herbs, and leave it in the sun, that the light may enter its heart.  For his services the shaman gets a little maize, beans, salt, etc.

On the fourth day the mother goes down to the river to bathe, and while bathing leaves the little one naked, exposed to the sun for at least an hour, in spite of all its wailings, that Father Sun may see and know his new child.  The baby is not washed until it is a year old.  Then it is cured again, by the shaman, who on various occasions throughout its life repeats his curing, that the child may grow well and that no sickness or bad accidents may befall it.  To protect it still further, pieces of palo hediondo or the chuchupate root, the strong smell of which is supposed to avail against disease, are wrapped in a piece of cloth and tied around the child’s neck.