WINTER CEREMONIAL DANCES 71

About dusk on the following day X, who is in his own house,
suddenly stands up and cries out:

“Yes. Ithascome. Iam afraid. Yes! I will doas you
bid me.”

The kukusiut women begin to drone and the uninitiated are
expelled. Heralds announce that a Ausiut has been pressed to
earth, and presently they go to every house inviting the kuku-
siut to gather in X’s. From this point on, the rite of ésuxtamem
continues in the manner already described.

The ability of X to summon these nine brothers from above
is a special prerogative; other kukusiut have one or other of
them as patron, but lack the power to call the whole number
toearth. One kusiut has exclusive knowledge of the mat which
is spread for Omgomkihka when the other supernatural beings
summon him to a ceremony; another of the place where the
brethren obtain their eagle down. Detailed information was
not obtained about these ceremonies.

THE CANNIBAL DANCE

Of all kusiut dances, the one of which the uninitiated are
most afraid, and which is, therefore, the strongest, is the
Cannibal dance. It is believed that the performer is exposed
to greater dangers than in any other rite, and observers have
the most spectacular ocular demonstrations of his powers. The
patrons of most Cannibals are Aiquntim, S exsexkalaix, or
Kamai-ts, who implant in their protégés a wolf, bear, or eagle,
causing them to devour strange foods. The Bella Coola con-
sider that a man is equally a Cannibal whether he has the
Prerogative of eating corpses, biting the living, eating dogs or
raw salmon, or biting himself. The most common of these is
the right to bite the living, and few of the older people are not
scarred thereby. Fear of Cannibals is one of the strongest
causes for the respect with which the uninitiated regard the
kusiut society, but though the holders of prerogatives of this
type are regarded with awe on account of their powers, they
are not considered as chiefs, as the Bella Coola say is the case