WINTER CEREMONIAL DANCES 197

season, subject to the usual consent of the marshals. No de-
scription need be given of the coming of the call and of the
ritual of ésxtémem. A large amount of wood is required, and
on the night of nustutalsap the many Carpentry tasks are al-
lotted. A large masked wooden figure is made to represent
Mother-Nature herself, two more of the elderly women who
attend her, and one of the inevitable Ano likwotsaix. Besides,
masks must be made of almost all the flowers and the trees,
their number only limited by X’s willingness to reward the
carpenters. It is said that formerly as many as three hundred
masks were sometimes ordered.

No detailed description is required for got#um, but the ritual
on nebusam differs from that of al] other dances. Early in the
morning a number of kukusuit gather in X’s house where the
carpenters decide on two old women to wear masks repre-
senting hags of great age and ugliness. A number of kukusiut
accompany them to the bottom house of the village where
they call out:

“We are in great trouble. Our daughter’s child is long
overdue. If you know of any good medicines, will you not
give them to us for her?”

The kukusiut drone when they see and hear these super-
natural visitors, and many of them give medicines to the old
women to increase the realistic effect. This is repeated in every
house of the village.

That night when all is ready, the uninitiated are called in
and take their places in the two corners near the door. They
see in the central position behind the fire a large wooden figure
wearing the mask of a woman in the pangs of labour with
enormously distended stomach. She is Nunuoska, Mother-
Nature, though the uninitiated do not know this as yet. She
lies on some raised planking; slightly below her are two old
women carrying sponges of dyed and undyed cedar-bark, as
if they were midwives Prepared to wash a new-born infant.
Two matting enclosures have been constructed, one in each
of the rear corners of the house, large enough to hide the per-