Native American Menstruation

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www.mum.org is the museum of menstruation. I spent HOURS there this morning poring over the many vintage menstrual devices, ads, and menarche booklets for girls and parents.
Pretty cool.

 

That's awesome WanderingSoul!
Wow

 

Aww! I hear that used to be quite common.

 

Thank you for the link, WS!!

 

Moss, sponges (from the sea), rags, old socks, I would imagine paper.

I've used all of those myself, actually. hah

 

Okay, Medicine Eagle says the Tsalagi had women's moon lodges and that they regarded the menstrual blood as sacred or super fertile/beneficial so the women would run through the cornfields during their moon time and just let it flow. She suggested washing out our rags and using the water on the garden or at least the houseplants. I kindof liked the idea that it is a precious substance instead of regarding it as filthy/garbage/waste/putrid.

In another book, they talked specifically about sitting on a patch of moss and letting it flow. I haven't tried this yet, but still want to every time, moss is soooo soft.

 

More women in guerrilla warfare die from infections from reusing cloth material during menstruation then any thing else.

It is like reusing bandages a big no no but in the jungle there is no dried material to soak up the blood so they end up reusing rags too much and die from it.

A lot of woman in poor countries re use rags and put them in boil water in the menstrual hut to sterilize them.

 

This is something that I think about from time to time as well. I'm sure the indians and people in those times had access to a variety of absorbent furs and wools shorn from animals that were hunted for food. It wouldn't have been that hard to work with the furs and wools that were not good enough to be used for clothing, and make them into something usable (and reusable) for menstruation. If I were to suddenly find myself in the wild and living off the land with a small group of people that all had abilities necessary, I'd probably rig up a small leather belt from a skinny leather strip, and a wider leather strip that was sewn into something that would look like a "string bikini" panty but that tied at the waist for easy on and off and snugness. Then I'd gather a variety of those furs and wools useless for clothing, wash them and bleach them with the sun enough to make them very absorbant, then just wad them up between my lady parts and the leather string bikini I made to hold it there... then rinse it all off as I go along. You'd only really need maybe 4 to 6 bunches of fur/wool, period (no pun intended) - as you could fill one bunch, rinse it out in the river, hang it up to dry, use the next one, and keep going... by the time you used the last bunch, the first should be dry. LOL