Why Apache Boys Couldn't Let Water Touch Their Lips

Before an Apache boy was trusted as a warrior, he was not allowed to let water touch his lips. Among the Chiricahua, a boy who wanted to fight volunteered as a dikohe, a novice, and rode on four raids with the warriors, holding horses, cooking and standing watch. The warriors he followed wore almost nothing, a breechclout, a headband and boots up to the thigh against the cactus, because cloth driven into a wound meant infection. The novice carried more. On his belt hung a drinking tube, because if water touched his lips he was told he would grow a beard, which the Chiricahua thought ugly. 📖 Source: Robert N. Watt, Apache Warrior 1860–86, Osprey Warrior 172 Beside it hung a scratching stick, because scratching his head with his fingers would make his skin soft. On his head he wore a buckskin cap painted with lightning, a new colour for each raid: black, blue, white, yellow, for east, south, west and north. He could not even speak normally. "I want to drink water" became "I begin to swim the specular iron ore." A mule was a "tail dragger." Every rule was a test of whether he could hold discipline, thirst and an unfamiliar vocabulary for weeks without slipping. The warriors carried the risk too: if a novice died through carelessness, the raid leader could lose his following. After the fourth raid the tube and the stick came off. He could marry and smoke, and nobody would protect him again. Every video here is planned, written and managed on musayko.com, a platform I built for creators. Timeline History is what it looks like in use. Which warrior should we reconstruct next?