The woman would sit for a time either upon a low stool or a chair, and then pass about in evident pain, but no word of complaint escaped her lips; she was majestic in her dignity. But few words were spoken by anyone; all minds seemed centered on the important event to come. “It was a sacred hour, too sacred for spoken words, for Sûs´sĭstinnako was to bestow the gift of a new life.” The whole affair was conducted with the greatest solemnity. At 11 o’clock the woman, whose suffering was now extreme, changed the small blanket which she wore around her for a larger one, which fell from her shoulders to the floor, and stood before the fireplace while the doctress standing behind her violently manipulated her abdomen with the palms of her hands. (The Zuñi observe a very different mode of manipulation.) The ho´naaite, who no longer acted professionally, but simply as the devoted father of the woman, took his seat upon a stool on the far side of the sand bed from the fireplace, the woman kneeling on the sand bed with her back to the fireplace and the doctress sitting on a low stool back of the woman. The woman clasped her hands about her father’s neck and was supported at the back by the doctress, who, encircling the woman with her arms, pressed upon the abdomen.[27] The father clasped his hands around his knees, holding a stone fetich of a cougar in the palm of the right hand, and the sister-in-law, standing to the left of the woman, placed the ear of corn to the top of the sufferer’s head and blew upon it during the periods of pain, to hasten the birth of the child. The prayer that was blown into the head was supposed to pass directly through the passageway of life. After each paroxysm the woman rose and passed about the room in a calm, quiet way. Sometimes she would sit on a low chair; again she would sit in front of the fire toasting her bare feet, and then leaving the extremely warm room would walk about outside of the house. The pains were very frequent for three hours, the longest interval being thirty minutes, the shortest thirty seconds, the average being ten minutes, the pains continuing from three to twenty minutes. Though her suffering was great, nothing more than a smothered groan escaped her lips. The doctress seemed perfectly ignorant and unable to render any real assistance.