68 THE BELLA COOLA INDIANS

seized and carried to the shore. He had thought that it would
be easy to free himself, but he found it impossible and was
carried under thesea. He bit frantically at the enfolding arms,
until he succeeded in freeing his own, with which he pushed up
the beak of the octopus, thus killing it. He rose to the surface
and returned home none the worse.

The Bella Coola do not profess to know all the animals of
the world; and if they see a strange one, they assume it to be
one known to their ancestors though unfamiliar to them.
Since any unknown animal is considered to have supernatural
power, due care must be exercised when one is seen. The fol-
lowing incident illustrates this point.

The mother’s brother of an informant worked for some thirty years
for a white man in Victoria. His employer once sent him to see a turtle
which was confined in a pool in a basement preparatory to being killed
for a banquet. As soon as he saw it, he said:

“My parents in Bella Coola told me of such a creature.”

A few days before Christmas the turtle was cut up and displayed on
four platters in the window of the store; the Bella Coola saw it, and thus
learned that it had been killed. The same night a sore appeared on his
wrist, and by the next day it was large and running. He said to his
employer:

“In a few days I will be dead. Do not grieve for me. The sight of
such supernatural creatures is too powerful for Indians; I survived one
experience, but twice has been too much for me and I will die.”

His employer wisely sent him to a white doctor who cured him,
although the scar remained. Years later the man returned to Bella
Coola where he displayed the mark as proof of his story. A few weeks
later he died, and the Bella Coola are firmly convinced that his death
was due to his having seen the turtle many years before.

Although the forests of British Columbia abound with
supernatural animals of enormous power, the attitude of the
Bella Coola hunter who penetrates into lonely places is not
one of constant fear. It is true that he may meet danger at
any turn, but danger is part and parcel of human life, and he
is by no means defenceless. He dreads the powers possessed
by creatures of another plane, but they for their part dread
certain human objects. Clothing which has been worn for so
long that it has become steeped with the emanations of its