WINTER CEREMONIAL DANCES 95

him and bring him back, struggling, to the village where he
snaps at all within reach. As soon as a person is bitten, an
assistant covers the wound with undyed cedar-bark. A number
of young men and women kukusiut accompany X wherever he
goes, without any special prerogative for doing so. When he
is weary, he rushes off into the forest where his followers sit
down in two groups until he has recovered from his exertions;
then he returns and bites more people. About noon the herald
goes through the village calling out:

Ipanap, ipdnap, kukusiaot, “Come to hold him down,
ye kukusiut.”

About two in the afternoon a number of kukusiut women
assemble on the beach. X, apparently in spite of his guar-
dians, dashes into the lowest house of the village where he
growls and bites a few people, while any women present drone.
Then those on the beach begin to drone and X rushes out of
the house towards them. They become quiet, and when almost
upon them, he appears to change his mind and hurries back
to the house immediately above the one that he has just
quitted. Again the women on the beach drone, and again
he runs out, only to return to the house next above. This is
repeated until he has visited every dwelling, his course up the
village being a series of Ws. He returns finally to his own
home and sits near the back-room.

Two sounding-boards and some beating sticks are brought
in and a number of kukusiut range themselves in a double row
under the leadership of a shaman to beat time madly to cure X.
Four times the ritual is repeated, amid the droning of the
women, and as the leader concludes with the short double jump,
the sticks strike the floor with an ear-splitting crash. X now
takes one of the sticks and starts to beat time for his own song,
but almost immediately goes off into a wild beating like that
of a maniac. Everyone cries out hoip, which ultimately
soothes him. Once more he takes the stick and essays to beat
time, but as before goes into a frenzy, and throws it away.
The singers have been listening carefully, as if striving to learn