256 THE BELLA COOLA INDIANS

sticks, while everyone calls out, hoip. This is repeated four
times. The sticks continue to sound irregularly as the younger
men pull the enclosure to pieces and throw it on the central fire.
By these means the kukusiut have been freed from their contact
with the supernatural and, perhaps even more important, the
repositories have been “‘tied up,” to use the native term, for
another year. Those members of the society whose dances
have taken place in the house now wash the black from their
faces and all share a light meal. The marshals take this last
opportunity of addressing their fellows, impressing on them the
necessity of maintaining the secrecy of the rites during the
summer season. Above all, they warn them to hide the whis-
tles and other paraphernalia most carefully. This concludes
the season’s ceremony in the house in question; some of the
kukusiut withdraw, others remain, and the uninitiated are free
to enter and take up the old threads of family life, as it was
before the coming of the first call.

If it is not too late at night the party may move to a second
house and remove the taboo from it in the same way. More
often this is done on the following night, when a second body
of kukusiut are allowed to wash. Another house is visited on
the next evening, and so on in succession till all the enclosures
are burnt and the only visible mark of what has happened is
the collar of dyed cedar-bark worn by each novice.

There may be certain prerogatives connected with this
finale which could not be learnt owing to its discontinuance for
many years. In fact, one old woman claimed to have a de-
finite right to sing at the destruction of the enclosures, but it
was unfortunately impossible to investigate the matter.

CoNCLUDING OBSERVATIONS AND HiIsToRY

It is virtually impossible to overestimate the importance
of the sociological aspects of the society. During the cere-
monial season the whole fabric of social life is altered; families
are divided, parents and children being separated in many