The christening does not take place for seven or eight months because, if the baby does not live, it is better not to have to remember it with a name. When the time for this ceremony is decided upon, it is held in the church, in the presence of its godparents, who make the child a gift and then carry it to their own house, where its head is washed, “an interesting instance of the way the Catholic rite may be combined with native practice.” Presents must be exchanged between godparents and the child on every following Christmas. What Indian name is given we may never know; for more common is the nickname, given later to describe some characteristic trait, or act, when a child’s personality becomes apparent. A happy little girl may be called “Laughs in the Morning,” or a fleet-footed boy who has shot his coyote will thereafter be known as “Flying Wolf.”[195] Then, usually, the Roman priest administers Christian baptism and bestows a Spanish name. If the child goes to an American school, he or she is sure to receive an American name, and by the last, to us as visitors from the outside, is most likely to be introduced. Thus we have another complex to add to all the others, none of which appears to confuse or disturb the serenity of the Indian. Many writers about Indian life in the pueblos emphasize the obedience of the children and speak of punishment by parents as being so little merited that it is an almost unheard-of event. The fact appears to be that parents terrify their children at a very early age with tales of supernatural beings and their evil powers, so that to utter a single talismanic word, like _el coco_, or _d’agüelo_, suffices to subdue the naughtiest infant. They obey from fear, not of their parents, but of the unseen powers. The _Agüelo_ (Spanish _abuelo_, for grandfather)[196] is a very old man who goes about the pueblos during Christmas week to see if all the children have learned their prayers properly. He is feared more than anything else, and the children always give him sweets and cakes to put in the bag he carries, but it is quite large enough to hold naughty children also. At each home he makes himself known by a loud knock on the door, and by the cry, _El Agüelo, El Agüelo! Aquí viene el Agüelo_![197] The children must at once appear and recite their prayers, after which he forms a circle with them and they dance from right to left, and then from left to right, singing at the same time some verses. Children who are frightened into good behavior all the year through by a mythical bugaboo cannot be expected to differentiate him from the one they actually see and propitiate at Christmas time.[198] The deeper our study of Indian inheritances, the stronger grows the conviction that, while the white conqueror has imposed upon the race the outward observance of conventions in daily conduct, in morals and religion, the mental attitude toward most of these things has not changed in the slightest degree.