A return to the ‘pretty house’. An interpretative bricolage of documentary sources on menarche rituals among the native peoples of the Argentine Patagonia (nineteenth and twentieth centuries)

Abstract

The main aim of this work is to put into consideration a new analysis of the text by the British author George Musters, of his description of a menarche ceremony (which he called “the pretty house”) that was observed among the Tehuelches from the Patagonia in 1869, in order to contextualize it from the historic point of view and from a gender perspective.From qualitative methodology we have made a bricolage which expresses an itinerary articulated by a genealogy of documentary sources from the nineteenth century, by testimonies produced in anthropological and linguistic works in the second half of the twentieth century, and by ethnographic records of our works in oral history which focus on rituals to foster the yarns.The comparison of sources of the selected documents leads us to think about the hypothesis that in the ceremonies of the first menstruation, from the nineteenth century on, it was fostered the attachment to yarns and fabric, in societies which also ritualized the field of textile work.