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For young girls in the backcountry who lived as Maidu, there was a specific 10-day ceremony that marked their coming of age as they left childhood and became adolescents. From A.L. Kroeber we learn:

"People were summoned from a distance by smoke signals lighted in the hills by the girl and her mother. She carried a deer-hoof rattle the entire 10 days. Each morning and evening she brought in firewood, and at intervals trained herself for the future, s it were, by carrying and depositing logs and heavy pieces of wood. The first four and last four nights of the ten were spent in dancing; the middle two constituted an interval of rest, marked only on the following morning by the piercing of the girl's ears by her mother with an awl of cedar wood. The dancing was outdoors, men and women holding hands about the fire… the girl danced with them, yielding her rattle to one of the singers. At dawn the songs were concluded, the rattle was thrown to the girl, she caught it and ran off at top speed. "

" On the morning of the tenth night came the wulu, which was danced … by women only, the girl… joining the dancers. The women now used clap-stick rattled. Toward noon the dance ceased, the girl with a number of companions bathed, and then ran them a race back to the house. The remainder of the day was spent in games and feasting.