WINTER CEREMONIAL DANCES 61

pelled; a Cannibal (II, p. 71) begins to growl and those who
are not members of the society leave hastily.

The next event is the burning of the masks. The wearers
remove them and lay them on the floor in front of the back-
room at the point marked O in the accompanying sketch.
Then X asks a friend tohelp him. The
person chosen picks up any two of the
masks and carries them around the fire,
sunwise, through B, where X is stand_
ing, to the point marked A (see Fig. 1). ON ®
The helper throws one mask on the fire,
and as he does so X lifts his arms, as if
throwing up some heavy weight, at the
same time uttering hotp, which has a Diesicn qe i os eee
beneficial effect in returning the mask of participants during mask-
whence it came. burning.

As one informant put it: “May you havea safe journey.”

The assistant throws the second mask on the fire, and again
X throws up his arms and cries hoip. He crosses to A where
he twice repeats the same cry, then returns to B. The assistant
picks up two more masks and throws them on the fire at the
same place and in the same manner as the two preceding, X
also doing as he did before. The masks are taken two at a time
until all have been burnt. The explanation given is to avoid
the danger of the uninitiated seeing them, but whether or not
this is a mere rationalization is doubtful. The Bella Coola say
that the Bella Bella do not burn their masks. Next the singers
strike up the first of X’s songs and he dances, while musicians
and audience join in; this is repeated for each of his songs.
If it is desired to hasten the ritual, the lengthy singing and
dancing is replaced by X giving only a short dance, unaccom-
panied by music. The Bella Coola do not appear to under-
stand why they dance at this time, although it is said that it
makes easy the departure of the masks.

In Kimsquit the ritual of mask-burning is slightly different,