8 THE BIG CANOE

huge animals? Do you suppose there is an island
here, Kahala? How could there be a hidden island?
There is no place for an island to hide.”

“Shim said there was a hidden island,” Kahala
protested.

“But Shim is a teller of stories,” Kilsa replied,
“and his stories are not always true, as we all know
very well. Sometimes he makes them up in his own
head and they are only a lot of fine words. Do you
think this story of the hidden island is one of the
true ones or one of the others?”

“T asked him about it just before we left,” Kahala
said slowly, “and he said that all the story-tellers
through the years had told about the hidden island
where the puffin birds mated and died. He said there
must have been such a place or the story would never
have started.”

Just then the breeze, freshening, blew the big
Haida hat from Kilsa’s head. Out over the waters it
blew and settled down upon a wave not far away,
bobbing up and down tantalizingly as they paddled
quickly toward it.

“Tt is my mother’s hat,”’ Kilsa mourned, almost in
tears, “‘and I do not want to lose it. No one in our tribe
ever made such beautiful hats as our mother, and all
say that this is the finest one she ever made.”

The Haidas, like the Tsimshians, had several va-
rieties of hats, woven from thin straw-like reeds of
spruce and cedar root, each one of which was worn