512 THE BELLA COOLA INDIANS

ment was intense. One of the chiefs told two boys who were excellent
shots to fire, but another interrupted, saying:

“This is too weighty a matter for mere lads.”

He himself covered Sekakmén-a and made ready to press the trigger.
The murderer, seeing his fellow-tribesmen in the vicinity, tried to stall
for time.

“Please do not shoot me,” he called out. “I have always been terrified
to die that way, please use a knife.”

“Some of those you slew were probably terrified of muskets too,” the
self-appointed executioner grimly replied.

“Wait just a moment,” Sekakmén-a pleaded. ‘I want to speak to my
kinsmen.”

“So probably did several of those you shot,” came the terse answer.

Then the chief fired and Sekakmdn-a fell dead. The Chilkotin were
armed and seemed on the point of rushing forward to revenge their rela-
tive, but the chief took another musket, brandished it in their direction,
and said:

“All right. The dogs will eat you too.”

A Chilkotin chief pointed out that the Bella Coola were armed and in
overwhelming numbers, so advised his angry followers to withdraw. Thus
the incident closed without further bloodshed. Some state that Sekak-
miin-a’s corpse was given to his relatives, others that it was buried by the
kukusiut alone in a large grave, beneath the body of Nusmuista.

A SUCCESSFUL HUNT

One September, between 1840 and 1850, a certain Sdnuxundxots was
preparing for a potlatch. Taking twenty men with him as packers, he
set out for mountain goats up the valley of the Sd#yenuis, which flows into
the main Bella Coola from the north, nearly opposite Mount Nusgaést.
They camped at a suitable spot, and for several days Sénuxumdxots hunted
with fair success. On one occasion, when out with his son, he happened
to notice a number of female goats on a narrow point of rock, beneath
which there was a sheer drop to a jagged pile of boulders. Quickly real-
izing that there was only one approach to the point where the animals were
standing, Sdxuxumdxots told his son to remain below while he climbed up
to stalk his quarry. With extreme caution, he succeeded in getting be-
tween the goats and the only line of escape; then he knew they were his,
and stood up boldly. He shot two or three, and stampeded the rest into
plunging over the precipice where they were crushed to death on the rocks
far beneath. The successful hunter climbed down to where his son had
remained and the two carried one of the carcasses out to the trail where