RELIGION 37

vidual’s ancestors; it enters into his own future as well. When
a Bella Coola dies, his spirit (I, p. 94) travels back on the
path of his ancestors from generation to generation until it
reaches the spot where the first one came to earth; there it
assumes the bird or animal cloak used on that occasion and
floats aloft to Nusmdt-a to live forever. Small wonder, there-
fore, that this house figures prominently in the thoughts of the
Bella Coola, and that they cling tenaciously to a belief in it.

Knowledge of Nusmdt.a has been inherited almost entirely
from the first ancestors of the Bella Coola, and only a few items
of information could be gleaned concerning it. Most men
think of it as an enormous replica of their own houses, but one
individual, of philosophic temperament, expressed the opinion
that it was without any inner partitions. His belief was based
on the following incident:

Some years ago a young man died without apparent reason. His
sorrowing father kept wondering:

“Why has my son died? Can he have committed some crime or
made some mistake?”

Despondent and grief-stricken, for a whole year the man did not
wash, ate little, and slept on the floor. At last he wandered away, alone,
into the mountains. Night overtook him and he lay down to sleep
without food. His son came to him in a dream, telling him not to
lament, that he was in a better place than this world, for A/guntim
had recalled him to Nusmdt-a to use his voice, which was unusually
powerful, as a means of conveying his wishes to the other occupants of
the house. Thus comforted, the father returned home in the morning,
washed, and again behaved normally. My informant suggested that
cross walls would be a bar to the strongest voice, and that Nusmdt-a
must consequently be partitionless.

Nusm4t-a contains not only the spirits of all deceased Bella
Coola, it is also the home of most of the supernatural beings.
These frequently descend to visit the earth, but always return
to the house above. So far as could be learnt, the only being
irremovably located there is an old woman, Snutgulxdls. The
most prominent article of furniture in Nusmdt-a is Aiqguntdm’s
seat, in the central position behind the fire. Over it is laid