After the feast, the tapexte, that is to say, the matting, which constituted the top of the altar, is hung up in a tree to be used again the next year.  The trees that have formed the bower near the altar are left undisturbed.  The ceremonial objects are placed in the trees for four or five days, and then put into a basket which is hung in some cave.  At Pueblo Viejo no more tribal mitotes are given, and it seems that no family anywhere makes more than one a year.

When a newly married couple wish to give their first mitote, they go away from the house for a month.  Both of them bathe and wash their clothes, and impose restrictions upon themselves, sleeping most of the time.  When awake they talk little to each other, and think constantly of the gods.  Only the most necessary work is done; he brings wood and she prepares the food, consisting of tortillas, which must not be toasted so long that they lose their white colour.  A thin white gruel, called atole, made from ground corn, is also eaten, but no deer-meat, nor fish with the exception of a small kind called mitshe.  Neither salt nor beans are allowed.  The blankets they wear must also be white.  During all this time they must not cut flowers or bathe or smoke; they must not get angry at each other, and at night they must sleep on different sides of the fire.

Fasting and abstinence form an integral part of the religion of these people.  A man who desires to become a shaman must keep strictly to a diet of white tortillas and atole for five years.  His drink is water, and that only once a day, in the afternoon.  The people here once fasted for two months, in order to aid General Porfirio Diaz to become President of Mexico; and they told me that they were soon going to subject themselves to similar privations in order to help another official whom they wanted to remain in his position.

Fasting also plays an important part in the curing of diseases.  The patient, with his doctor, may go out and live in the woods and fast for many days, the shaman smoking tobacco all the time.  An omen as to whether the patient will live or die is taken from the colour of the tobacco smoke.  If it is yellow the omen is bad.  Or if the smoke remains dense the patient will live; but if it disperses he will die.

A very interesting ceremony is performed over a child when it is one year old.  The parents go with the shaman into the field and fast for five days before the anniversary and for five days afterward.  An hour or two after sunset a big fire is made and four arrows and the ceremonial object called god’s eye are placed east of it.  The parents and those present look east all the time.  The shaman first makes four ceremonial circuits, then puffs tobacco-smoke on the god’s eye and on the child.  He sings incantations and again makes four ceremonial circuits, and smokes as before.  Next he places his mouth to the child’s forehead, and draws out something that is called the cochiste, the sleep or dreams,