8 THE BELLA COOLA INDIANS

the hair from his head. After various rites which prove that
the Cannibal actually possesses peculiar power, he is calmed
and songs are sung describing what he saw aloft, and the
dangers from which he escaped. The uninitiated shiver sym-
pathetically, marvel at his valour, and anticipate with mixed
feelings the time when they too may be privileged to have
similar experiences. Or they may witness the killing of one of
their fellow-villagers by disembowelling, and his restoration to
life. They know the victim; under ordinary circumstances he
could not endure death, hence the claim that his strength is
due to the call given him by his patron is accepted as an obvious
fact. The uninitiated never suspect that they are victims of
an elaborate deception. At all times the kukusiut are eager to
make known their own perils, and if it happens that a member
of the society dies while in concealment, his corpse is buried
secretly. The explanation given is that he has succumbed to
some of the dangers to which kukustut are exposed, a fiction
readily believed in view of the absence of the usual funeral
rites.

Though it is common knowledge that the ability of a kustut
to perform any extraordinary feat has its source in the per-
formance of the same feat by his supernatural patron, yet it is
equally well known that his specific power has been brought
to this earth and is located in one particular spot. An ancestor
must in some way have come in contact with the patron, and
at that time his Ausiut name, carrying with it the prerogatives
of supernatural patronage and of dancing on this earth, was
deposited for safe-keeping in a repository, muskdsiutsta (also
called nusxi’ipsta), by the supernatural woman Ano likwoisaix.
Each repository is thought of as a cave, or hollow, beneath a
large tree, a rock, or other distinctive natural object; to obtain
his power a kusiut initiate must go there, actual contact with
his patron being unnecessary. Every kusiut prerogative has its
repository and in each of these is Ano likwotsaix; she is one,
yet capable of being simultaneously in many hundred spots,
corresponding to the many hundred kusiut prerogatives. Her