The purpose of the initiation of boys, corresponding to the first-menstruation rites of females, was the spiritual as well as the physical strengthening of the individual. While the physical exposures and privations were thought to render him strong in body and fearless in battle, the dreams coming upon him, in consequence of the exhaustion by hunger and maddening by all sorts of physic, were supposed to furnish him visions, which would reveal to him enchanting views for future life, material riches and the ways to acquire them, the principles of bravery and persistence, the modes of charming enemies and game at a distance, of obtaining scalps, and prospects of general happiness and of a respected position in his tribe.[124]