102 BRITISH COLUMBIA.

from then onwards the boy held a recognized traditional position among the
titled men of his tribe.

Apart from this training in tribal ambitions and economic methods, education
seems to have been gained chiefly by imitation and manual training. In view of
the nomadic habits and primitive mode of life led by the Carrier tribe it is of
interest to learn that they recognized two forms of education, of which one
has been described as “secular, consisting chiefly of manual training, the other
ethical or religious, which included their traditions and folk-lore.’”’ Old men
aroused pride and emulation by tales of ancestral feats, and on the Coast young
people from infancy onwards acquired physical courage by enforced cold bathing.
During adolescence whipping with fir boughs frequently followed as they emerged
from the water. A whipping ceremony was also held during the winter season
by the Thompson, when girls and boys were required to bear the use of a whip
(made of service-berry twigs) at the hands of an elderly man. In neither case
were these ordeals punishments; their object was to cultivate endurance as a
preliminary to the tests imposed, especially in the case of boys, during pubertal
ceremonies.

Then, as now, cautionary tales had their place. “Thus a Haida story relates
how a certain small boy was always late when food was served and continued his
bad habit in spite of repeated reproofs from his mother. One day, tardy as usual,
she only gave him a piece of hard, dry salmon to eat. Sad and hungry he went
to the beach close by, dipping the food in water to soften it. ‘The King of the
Salmon happened to catch sight of the little boy as he swam past, seized him and
carried him off to Salmon ‘Town deep under the water, where the child was
turned into a salmon. When the salmon began to run up the river next year,
the small boy’s father caught fish after fish in the stream and took them home for
his wife to cook and dry them for winter use. Grasping a specially fine one he
began to cut off its head when his knife struck hard on copper. Then he temem-
bered that his little lost son had worn a copper neck-ring, so he took the fish
outside the house and hung it under the drip from the roof. As the skin sloughed
off the salmon, lo! there lay the child inside. Presently the boy revived and
lived to grow up and became in time a powerful shaman; but always he had a
sore neck where his father’s knife had cut down on the copper ring, to remind
him of what happens to inconsiderate and tardy children.

CONVENTIONS ASSOCIATED WITH ADOLESCENCE.

Elaborate ceremonial observances existed among all the tribes, m many of which
imposed a severe physical and emotional strain on the young people, especially
boys. In the case of girls these observances and taboos involved conditions of
seclusion, either for a short time or extending to three or four years. They
included restrictions on the kind and amount of food, the wearing of a distinctive
dress, and others, variable in each tribe.

These observances, which included tests of courage and endurance, were far
more exacting in the case of boys. The object in view was the establishment of
a Close relationship with a guardian spirit or protector, by means of purification
through fasting, bathing, purging, and lonely periods passed in the recesses of
dense forests or remote mountains. These’ ordeals often concluded with out-
breaks of frenzy, familiar to students of Secret Society dances among the Haida
and Kwakiutl. ‘The spirit protector, or ‘‘ Manitou,” of the Overstrained, ex-
hausted novice assumed the form of a bird or animal, which would Henceforth
guard the boy’s welfare and impart strength in time of need. Among the Carriers