34 THE BELLA COOLA INDIANS

call is that something strange has happened to the “mortal.”
At intervals throughout the day he repeats this announcement,
and towards nightfall goes around calling:

Skinap, skinap, kukusiaot, “Cure, cure, ye members of
the kusiut society, power has come to the son of the chief [or
to the mortal].”’

The kukusiut assemble in X’s house, taking their places
around the fire; the uninitiated crowd near the doorway. X
is seated among his relatives and some of the senior members
of the society behind the fire. A herald calls out:

“T want a siki to help X.”

In every village there are at least two kukusiut who have,
embodied with their kusiut names, the professional prerogative
of acting as healer to every novice; it is believed that the
ancestor of each obtained a name and this right through a
revelation from some supernatural healer. Since that time the
owner of the name has been able to insert some of his own ever-
present power into a neophyte to enable him to sustain the
dangers of admission to the society. This is the fiction
taught to the uninitiated. The profession of szkz can be trans-
mitted by willing like any other prerogative and it occasionally
happens that the same individual is ski for both kustut and
sisaok. In answer to the herald’s call, the two sikt come
forward and crouch behind the fire, one on either side of it.
Their faces are blackened with soot, and each wears a blanket,
decorated with dyed cedar-bark, thrown loosely over his
shoulders, leaving the chest and stomach bare except for an
apron of deer hooves or puffin beaks. Meanwhile beating
sticks are distributed among most of the kukusiut who strike
furiously on the floor with them, without any attempt to keep
time; the sole object is to produce the greatest din possible.

One of the s#ki contorts himself in an amazing manner,
presses his hands against his stomach as if to force something
from it, and rolls from side to side on his haunches, until at
length he produces, as if from his body, a rock crystal (see
Plate 3). He waves this to and fro in his hands, then goes