CHAPTER II

RELIGION

The Universe — Supernatural Beings — Supernatural Elements
in Human Beings—Means of Propitiation

THe UNIVERSE

NE of the subjects about which Bella Coola philosophers
pondered in former times, and about which definite
information has come down to the present generation, is the
universe. The young people, who have absorbed a certain
amount of education from the white man, are scornful of the
beliefs of their fathers, but it was possible to obtain the fol-
lowing information from a few of the older men and women.
They say that the earth is circular and flat, like an island.
What it rests upon is problematical, though the assumption
is that it is water. The world is kept from capsizing by the
supernatural being, Sinia, who lives amid the ice in the
far north; he grasps a rope to which the earth is fastened,
and he keeps it steady by maintaining a tension on the rope
to hold the world against his feet. Long, long ago Sninia
was seen by human beings, but in later years no one has
penetrated to his distant home and the Bella Coola have
little regard for him. It was in the distant past, also, that
human beings discovered the earth to be round, after certain
semi-supernatural men had made a circuit of it. The four
corners of space have not the same importance to the Bella
Coola as they have, for example, to the Indians of the Plains.
It is only through questioning that the investigator learns
that the East is regarded as the top of the world, the South is
the sun at its zenith, the West is the bottom, and the North
is nothing, merely the opposite to the south. These beliefs
play little part in the lives of the people.
Above our earth stretches an inverted dome, its edges
resting on those of the world. This dome, the sky, 1s called

23