WARFARE 375

The other agreed, so they paddled in and landed at the bottom of the
village, heedless of the fact that it was full of Carriers. The Nusgalst
people seem to have remained passive, but the angry Carriers came
rushing forth and Ogmikumx spoke proudly to them:

“You would be dead as your chief if we had not lost our weapons.”

The two brothers walked slowly up the long sidewalk of the village,
while the Carriers skulked around, uttering threats, casting $tones and
shooting arrows. Some of the latter stuck in their backs, but long pre-
viously both Tsd-kmai and Odmikimx had eaten part of a susiut? which
had rendered their bodies impervious to such wounds. Arrived at the
upper end of the village, they stopped and waited, making no attempt
to defend themselves, until they were killed. At intervals throughout the
day the Carriers treated the two bodies with ignominy, now thrusting
spears into them, now beating them, and all this time not a single Bella
Coola dared even to protest, so much were they filled with fear of the
Carriers who, when roused as they then were, fight like mad dogs. In the
late afternoon one of the women thrust a knife into the eyes of the fallen
warriors. Even this insult did not rouse the Nusga/st people themselves,
but Winds, one of their slaves, felt called upon to take action. Before
being captured, he had been a person of importance in his own home
and the Bella Coola had allowed him to become a leading member of the
kusiut society; in the course of time he had become entirely reconciled
to his fate, and even thought as a Bella Coola which gave him the neces-
sary assurance to address the Carriers.

“Wa, wa,” he said. “See the breadth of the sky. I have never seen,
nor have I even heard of such a thing as you have done today. Truly
you have wiped your feet on all that is sacred and powerful.”

This speech for the first time brought the enormity of their offence
home to the Carriers. The actual taking of life did not affright them,
but in their excitement they had overlooked what was to Winds the most
obvious sin: they had passed and repassed on the sidewalk outside a
house where a kusiut dance was taking place. Thus reminded of the
danger to which they had exposed themselves, the Carriers withdrew.

Next day the Nusga/st people buried the four victims. Qama?xem had
been a mighty chief and, being distantly related, they would normally
have given him an elaborate funeral, but now they acted as if dazed and
unaware of his prowess. A man who owned a powerful medicine put
some of it in the eyes of the two who had been mutilated by the Carrier
woman; as the bodies began to decompose, those who had killed them
began to suffer from eye-trouble, and the woman became blind. Believing
that their sin had caused their misfortunes, the Carriers fled home.

*To call attention in this way to the breadth of the universe carries with it the
implication that it will fall to crush those who have broken a sacred law.