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202 THE BELLA COOLA INDIANS

During gotium and nebusam days the carpenters gather in
X’s house where they construct a long ladder. The uprights
and rungs are of split cedar, and each of the latter is decorated
with a tuft of dyed, and a tuft of undyed cedar-bark; two white
eagle-tail feathers are fastened to the top. In the afternoon
of nebusam, a kusiut who is also a chief blackens his face, dons
a collar of dyed cedar-bark and sallies forth to invite guests
from the adjacent villages. About the same time the smoke-
vent in X’s house is pushed back and the ladder is erected,
projecting a considerable distance above the roof. The un-
initiated see it clearly and wonder what it may portend. In
the evening the kukusiut assemble and the singers beat out X’s
two songs for the benefit of the guest visitors. Then the
uninitiated are calledin. They see the lower part of the ladder,
and gaze with wonder on X who keeps walking backwards and
forwards in his raised enclosure, clad in a dance-apron and a
black blanket to which is tied one end of the long rope. Two
kukusiut assistants hold a section of it as if to anchor him.
The dancer carries a rattle which he keeps shaking violently.
His two songs are sung and everything is now ready for the
main performance. Stillshaking his rattle, X climbs the ladder
and disappears from sight through the roof, dragging the rope
after him. The sound of the rattle grows gradually fainter and
fainter, but the cable is steadily drawn up through the opening.
It is so realistic that the uninitiated hardly require the expla-
nation given by an eloquent kusiut that a strange power has
come to X, enabling him to climb up a ladder which lengthens
of its own accord until he will ultimately reach the land above.
The orator explains how the dancer will be able to straighten
the tally posts, and thus have it in his power to govern the life
of an individual, though normally it is only the supernatural
beings who can do so. In this connection he employs the term
mutletsta, a word seldom used which has the significance of “A
Measuring of the Span of Life.”

As at kusiotem dances, spies guard the doorway and
threaten death to the kukusiut unless X return in safety. No