14

Speaking broadly, spring and summer were seasons for
gathering food, autumn for secular entertainments, and winter
for religious ones. Despite a certain insecurity, due largely to
raids by hostile tribes, life was rather pleasant and easy on this
coast, even for the slaves.

RELIGION

The Pacific Coast natives believed that birds, animals, and
fish possessed extraordinary powers, and that in addition there
were other supernatural beings haunting the woods and the
waters, and controlling the phenomena of nature. Thus far
they agreed with other Indians. They differed, however, in
imagining that some of these spirits played favourites by attach-
ing themselves to individual Indian ‘‘Houses’’; and that a spirit,
suddenly taking possession of some man or woman belonging
to its House, could produce an illness only dispelled by an
impersonation of that spirit in a ritual dance. Such “‘seizures”’
commonly recurred each winter, so that the natives spent nearly
every evening from late December until mid-March in religious
dances. At other seasons the spirit guardian was supposed to
remain quiescent, though it might aid its protégé in a special
emergency.

Some of the natives subordinated all the petty spirits
under a Great Sky God, benevolent but rather inactive; and in
the south of British Columbia they evolved a class of semi-
hereditary priests who chanted prayers at marriages, funerals,
and similar occasions, and also claimed to dominate men’s souls
through incantations. Distinct from these priests were the
ordinary medicine-men, who, as everywhere, professed power to
heal and cause diseases through the favour of helping spirits.

DANCES

The secular dances given by the northern nobles in con-
nection with their emblems or crests, and the religious dances
held all along the Pacific coast, provided healthy recreation
physically and mentally, and at the same time stimulated the
native arts and crafts by their demand for special costumes and
stage settings. ‘The principal performances took place at night
inside the great houses under the dim light of two or three fires;
and the settings and costumes varied locally, and also at the
whims of the dancers.

At one performance a weirdly painted dancer, with gleaming
wolf’s tusks protruding from his mouth, leaped and pirouetted
about the floor while the audience frenziedly roared his song