382 THE BELLA COOLA INDIANS

better than hunting birds and small animals with miniature
bows and arrows, or snaring them in nooses of grass or string.
Little girls make playhouses in which they cook wonderful
meals of berries, with perhaps the addition of a wooden fish.
On the whole, however, the children do not enter into play as
boisterously as white boys and girls, nor do they seem to derive
as much pleasure from it. In former times, when clothing was
scanty, small lads used to delight in picking nettles and beating
one another with the stinging branches; this must have caused
considerable pain, but it was a point of honour not to cry out,
and anyone, perhaps caught unaware, who showed discomfort,
was laughed at as a coward. Both boys and girls are fond of
swinging, and even adult women sometimes find time to enjoy
themselves by swaying to and fro at the end of a rope.

Young Bella Coola do not have as many toys as white
children, and none of them is complex. Some girls have crude
wooden dolls, though elaborate figurines are reserved for use
in kustut dances. Perhaps the most cherished plaything is a
small puppy or, in recent years, a kitten, though the unfor-
tunate animal is handled and mauled without consideration.
A good carpenter may make for his son a wooden top or a bull-
roarer, to the envy of his less fortunate friends.
Both types of toys are said to be used in
Nusm4t-a and at some kusiut dances the masked
figures carry them to play with.

There is one game, s/eli, which the salmon are
said to delight to watch, and which is accordingly
played by boys as soon as the first spring salmon
have been disposed of with fitting rites. Each
makes for himself, or is given by his father, a
wooden spear with a projecting barb, fastened as
shown in the accompanying sketch (see Fig. 2). A
loop of branches is made and thrown into a pool of
stagnant, or slow-moving water, on each side of
which stands a rival group of competitors. At a
signal, all throw their spears simultaneously, with the intention
of passing them through the ring, so that the barb of each will

Fic. 2.
“Toy spear.”