174 THE BELLA COOLA INDIANS

This is such an important occasion that leading kukusiut from
neighbouring towns are often invited to be present. If this is
to be done, heralds are sent for the purpose during the following
day.

Next evening the kukusiut are invited to X’s house in the
usual manner, many of them unaware that the answer is soon
to be given. The customary ritual is carried out and the
uninitiated summoned in due course. By this time X is sup-
posed to have been weakened by his long fast, and to give
colour to that claim, two assistants support him as he totters
feebly to and froin his enclosure. Instead of waving his stick
horizontally above his head, X now rests his weight on it, with

‘his helpers holding the ends. After the customary frenzied

beating with sticks, X again invites guesses, but still no one
can find the three answers. Meanwhile the father or some
elderly friend of the youth chosen to guess correctly, slips
down to where he is sitting and whispers to him to try, for
example, 4imaltua. The youth timidly does so, and at once
X begins to shake violently, and calls frantically:

“More! More!’

In Kimsquit, though not in Bella Coola, the long drawn-
out whistling of Svitsmdn-a is heard, though of course the un-
initiated do not know that four kukusiut have been sent out
for this purpose. The excitement becomes intense.

The man who is prompting the successful guesser whispers
to him the second answer. The young man calls it out and X
becomes more and more excited, shaking wildly and shouting:

“More! More! You mortal.”

Finally the third answer is given. In Bella Coola the
dancer leaps high in the air from his enclosure and falls to the
ground beneath as if dead. Saixnds of Kimsquit, on the other
hand, whose patron is the wild Kokosixim, becomes frenzied,
breaks his stick and enclosure and acts like a raging, though
feeble, lunatic. Irrespective of X’s behaviour, the marshals
ask the uninitiated to withdraw, and the growling Cannibals
add point to the request. It is at this juncture in Bella Coola