2 THE BELLA COOLA INDIANS

contact with supernatural beings, so that it is a time for grave
thoughts and decorous behaviour. Even by day the members
pass from house to house with dignified mien, not loitering
around the sidewalks nor indulging in frivolity. Every effort
is made to prevent quarrels between members who are ex-
pected to show by their appearance and actions the gravity of
the rites in which they are engaged. Night after night they
assemble at the house wherein the dance is taking place; those
who have performed, and are therefore most closely in touch
with the supernatural, even sleep there, not returning to their
own houses until March. A dance usually lasts four nights,
and during that time the performer’s house, in which it takes
place, is termed a nugpik, “An Empty House.” The signi-
ficance of this designation is unknown.

Membership in the society depends on a duly validated
ancestral prerogative to perform one of the many kustut dances.
At the present time every Bella Coola is a kusiut, even babes
in arms being initiated, but formerly no one was admitted until
he or she had reached an age of discretion. Some informants
went so far as to say that the hair of an initiate must have
begun to turn grey, and all agreed that no one was ever admit-
ted until at least twenty, or more often, twenty-five years of
age. Initiates were frequently still older; one woman, for
example, stated that her mother was past the age of child-
bearing before admission. Since only a member of the society
could be called by a kusiut name, the uninitiated continued to
be known by the ancestral names conferred on them at infancy
until they received kusiut designations. The importance of the
society depends on the belief of the uninitiated in the super-
natural powers of its members, and as there are now none to
impress, the rites carried out today are little more than pic-
tures of what took place years ago. It is the aim of the Bella
Coola to carry out the dances as if uninitiated persons were in
attendance, and since most of the following information was
obtained from men who well remembered their sensations when
not members of the society, it is justifiable to use the present