WINTER CEREMONIAL DANCES =

functions are to guard the names, and to keep in touch with the
patrons. Every uninitiated person believes that if he could
only have the good fortune to find a repository, he would obtain
the kusiut prerogative there localized. Ano'likwotsaix travels
only during the ceremonial season when she is present at every
kusiut dance in the form of a woman with a long, thin face and
pointed chin (see Plate 13), who “explains” the significance
of the figures to the uninitiated in a peculiar high-pitched
voice. She is well able to do so since as guardian of reposi-
tories she knows the prerogative of each member of the society.
Frequently she mocks the uninitiated:

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” she jeers. “You [naming some ambitious
youth], you who think yourself so smart, you nearly fell over
me that time you walked up in the woods behind the village
looking for grouse. If I had been a bear I could have felled
you with a blow of my paw. How can you ever hope to
become a kusiut like your father and grandfather if you are so
blind.”

His fellows are inclined to join in the laughter at the one
singled out for dno likwoisaix’s scorn, but she flays them all
in turn. “She” is, of course, a kustut chosen for fluency and
ability to make biting remarks. Parents tell their children
that in the autumn, pleased at the sight of falling leaves,
Ano’likwoisaix bares the roof of her house and sits shaking her
fingers like a dancer.

“Go to the woods and look for her,” they say. “If she sees
you she will say ‘feu’ and beckon to you. Then you will be-
come a kusiut.”’

To further this deception, Aukusiut are accustomed to dis-
guise themselves as Ano°likwotsaix and move around in the
autumn forest, taking care that no uninitiated comes too near
for safety. An individual may have several kusiut preroga-
tives, and if he wishes to transfer one of these to an associate,
the report is circulated that the recipient has stumbled upon
the repository of the donor. The latter then acts as if he were
crazy, and the uninitiated are told that he is a nukaxem, an