To what end B-Mitzvah? A cross-cultural look at adolescent rites of passage helps us take a look at our own rite with new eyes.
From Clare R. Farrer, "The Mescalero Girls’ Puberty Ceremony", page 240 of Mahdi, Louise Carus. Crossroads: The Quest for Contemporary Rites of Passage, Carus Publishing Company, Chicago, 1996.
The ceremony is conducted by men determined to be holy by the tribe, beyond reproach. Each Holy Man/Singer must be intelligent and able to memorize and interpret songs in a special form of Mescalero Apache. Each must sing 64 different songs on each of the four nights of the Ceremony Additionally, the Singer must memorize long stories of the people, their travels, and accounts of tribal interacts from the beginning to the present. The Ceremony is thus a re-enactment of events from the beginning of cosmological time and a recitation of ethno-history.