184 THE BELLA COOLA INDIANS

fire, while the women drone out an accompaniment. The
mask has only one opening for eyes and nose, blinding the per-
former, so that he has to be guided by X, and two other kuku-
siut, though the necessity for their services is not apparent to
the uninitiated. The faces of these conductors are blackened
and they wear collars of dyed cedar-bark, but no masks; one
of them carries some eagle down which he keeps blowing over
Thunder’s head. To the ignorant spectators it appears as if
these guides were really deferential attendants.** When the
mighty supernatural one has almost completed a circuit of the
fire he stops, holds out his shaking arms over it and absorbs
power from the smoke; then reascends the box behind the
matting from which he first jumped. One of the kukusiui
thrusts into his hand a perforated rattle containing smoulder-
ing cedar-bark. Carrying this (see Plate 11), Thunder again
leaps down and dances around the fire, guarded as before by
X and two assistants, but this time shaking out burning sparks
from the rattle. Now, instead of the droning of the women
alone, there is a prodigious racket as he goes around; the drums
are beaten, the sticks are rattled, a man concealed on the roof
stamps and clatters on the boards, another pounds on loose
planking with a heavy stone, while Thunder himself keeps
calling out in a booming voice. Again he pauses to absorb
power from the fire before retiring behind the matting, which
is then drawn. The announcer cries out:

“The fire kusiut of the supernatural ones has been with us;
his fire is too wonderful for us.”’

He drones and there appears a masked figure of Sigalusnam.
This being dances around the fire, without speaking, but at
intervals drenching the audience with water from a dish which
he carries. When he has completed his circuit and withdrawn,
Ano’likwotsaix discourses upon Thunder, informing the unini-
tiated that his fire-rattle is the bird of the lightning, a mys-
terious creature about which little is known. She adds that

*Similar guide-attendants often accompany other supernatural beings.