486 THE BELLA COOLA INDIANS

THE BRAIN SUCKER

Perhaps a hundred years after the first people came down to earth,
‘there remained in Nusmdt-a2 a woman, called Snutgutxdls. She was old;
so old that the skin on her face hung in great folds, while her breasts and
body consisted of a mass of leather-like wrinkles of extreme ugliness. She
was so old that she appeared hardly human, more like a witch than a
woman. Afguntdm, by his supernatural power, had kept her alive long
after her normal span of life had been completed. One day she said to
him:

“IT want to go down to earth to pay a visit to my friends there.”

Aiguntim agreed, and caused an easy road to appear which led her to
the bank of the Kimsquit River, opposite a village. She called out and
four brothers who heard her brought her across in their canoe to the settle-
ment, where they admitted her to their house. Then they sent word to
all their friends to come and see the scarcely human hag whom they had
found, this being the first time that the people had ever seen anybody of
the kind.

Presently the four brothers went off to hunt mountain goats, leaving
at home their sister, an adolescent girl, in seclusion. Some twenty or
thirty people were living in the house, as was customary in the old days,
and Snutguixd/s was given a place near the door. That evening a baby
girl cried incessantly; the mother could not pacify her.

“Please give her to me,” said Swutguixd/s, “I will put her to sleep.”’

The old woman took the fretting child in her arms and crooned into
her ear:

“Kwluwatsikin-idax, tci tedtstin-i teix, kwlu, kwlu, kwlu, kwli.”
“Hush! Hush! Little girl, kwlu, kwlu, kwlu, kwli.”’®

This is the kind of lullaby which mothers sing to their children so no
one considered it surprising when the hag bent close to the infant’s head.
When no one was watching, she inserted her mouth into its ear, sucked
out its brains, and thus killed the little one. Then she gave it back to its
mother.

“Put it to bed,” she said. “The baby is asleep.”

The mother obeyed, not knowing what the treacherous old hag had
done.

When night came all in the house went to sleep, except the young girl
who lay awake, but silent in her corner. Presently she saw the Habby
cheeks and lips of the old woman contract into a long, snout-like tube

This was recorded as song VII D 46b, National Museum of Canada; singer,
Jim Pollard.