Up and down its length it is pummeled, and as
many as a hundred blows fall -- fall after the cries cease, after the
eyes close and open and close again a dozen times, and after the bird
is dead. The head receives a few sharp blows, a jet of blood spurts
out, and the ceremonial killing is past. The man, still sitting on
his haunches, still clasping the feet of the pendent bird, moves
over beside his fire, faces his dwelling, and voices the only words
of this strangely cruel scene. His eyes are open, his head unbending,
and he gazes before him as he earnestly asks a blessing on the people,
their pigs, chickens, and crops.
The old men say it is bad to cut off a chicken's head -- it is like
taking a human head, and, besides, they say that the pummeling makes
the flesh on the bony wings and neck larger and more abundant --
so all fowls killed are beaten to death.
After the oral part of the ceremony the fowl is held in the flames
till all its feathers are burned off. It is cut up and cooked in the
olla before the door of the dwelling, and the entire family eats of it.
Each family has the Mang'-mang ceremony, and so also has each
broken household if it possesses a sementera -- though a lone woman
calls in a man, who alone may perform the rite connected with the
ceremonial killing, and who must cook the fowl.
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