Gomara's statement, that while these cakes of maize and wormwood seed were cooking the young men were beating on drums, would find its parallel in any account that might be written of the behavior of the Zuñi, while preparing for their sacred feasts. The squaws grind the meal to be used on these occasions to the accompaniment of singing by the medicine-men and much drumming by a band of assistants selected from among the young men and boys. Mr. Francis La Flèche, a nearly full-blood Omaha Indian, read before the Anthropological Society of Washington, D. C., in 1888, a paper descriptive of the funeral customs of his people, in which he related that when an Indian was supposed to be threatened with death the medicine-men would go in a lodge sweat-bath with him and sing, and at the same time "pronouncing certain incantations and sprinkling the body of the client with the powder of the artemisia, supposed to be the food of the ghosts."[377] To say that a certain powder is the food of the ghosts of a tribe is to say indirectly that the same powder was once the food of the tribe's ancestors. The Peruvians seem to have made use of the same kind of sacrificial cakes kneaded with the blood of the human victim. We are told that in the month of January no strangers were allowed to enter the city of Cuzco, and that there was then a distribution of corn cakes made with the blood of the victim, which were to be eaten as a mark of alliance with the Inca. "Les daban unos Bollos de Maíz, con sangre de el sacrificio, que comian, en señal de confederacion con el Inga."[378] Balboa says that the Peruvians had a festival intended to signalize the arrival of their young men at manhood, in which occurred a sort of communion consisting of bread kneaded by the young virgins of the sun with the blood of victims. This same kind of communion was also noted at another festival occurring in our month of September of each year. ("Un festin composé de pain pétri par les jeunes vierges du Soleil avec le sang des victimes."[379]) There were other ceremonial usages among the Aztecs, in which the tule rush itself, "espadaña," was employed, as at childbirth, marriage, the festivals in honor of Tlaloc, and in the rough games played by boys. It is possible that from being a prehistoric food the pollen of the tule, or the plant which furnished it, became associated with the idea of sustenance, fertility, reproduction, and therefore very properly formed part of the ritual necessary in weddings or connected with the earliest hours of a child's life, much as rice has been used so freely in other parts of the world.[380] Among the Aztecs the newly born babe was laid upon fresh green tule rushes, with great ceremony, while its name was given to it.[380] Gomara says that the mats used in the marriage ceremonies of the Aztecs were made of tules. "Esteras verdes de espadañas."[381]