78 THE BELLA COOLA INDIANS

Coola throw pieces of it and eagle down on the water.

- Before leaving the subject of supernatural animals, a word
must be said concerning the attitude of the Bella Coola to
those in whose forms their first ancestors came to earth. If,
for example, a man’s first ancestor descended as a raven, this
knowledge is a valuable possession of himself and his family.
Indeed, the most treasured possessions of a Bella Coola are
not the material objects collected by him through life, but the
intangible rights wrapped up in his ancestral history. These
are referred to under four names:

(1) Smaiusta, ‘Preserved Story”; the myth describing the
coming to earth of a man’s first ancestors in the beginning of
time.

(2) Kotetta, “What Was Sent Down’; the names and other
possessions given by A7guntém to a man’s first ancestors in the
beginning of time.

(3) Txamatt, “Whence We Came’; the place to which a
man’s first ancestors came in the beginning of time, and the
one from which they have since spread.

(4) Qwatttnta.

Various smaiusta are recorded in vol. I, chap. vi, and the
second and third terms are really part of the first, although to
the Bella Coola they are psychologically distinct. Qwatttinta
is the word used for both the birds or animals chosen as
cloaks by the first settlers, and also for creatures with which
the early people came in contact. The nearest interpretation
appears to be, “Crest.” When a Bella Coola whose first an-
cestor came to earth as a raven portrays that bird, it serves as
a visible mark of his intangible possession. In former days,
if a man carved on stone so that his work and his name would
never be forgotten, it was a qwatinekam, a constant reminder
of his greatness to generations then unborn. A gwatitinta,
therefore, combines the concept of memorial with that of crest,
so that Bella Coola speak of the white man’s memorials as
gwatttinta. In brief, a man regards the form assumed by his
ancestor when coming to this earth as an emblem of the