WINTER CEREMONIAL DANCES 11

ceal their subterfuges, it sometimes happens that an uninitiated
person sees or hears something which he should not know. The
simplest way to deal with this situation is to kill the observer.
It is said that as late as Ig00 a young man, impelled by
curiosity, wandered up a valley into which he had been warned
not to penetrate, and met a Cannibal whom he believed had
vanished into the upper realms. Almost dumbfounded, he
accepted the latter’s invitation to sit down, and was slain by
him. More often, and especially if the observer is the child
of a kusiut, he is initiated into the ranks of the society.
If this happens at any time of year except the actual cere-
monial season, he cannot perform immediately, but he is taken
to the secret meeting place of the village chiefs, and there the
mysteries of the organization are explained to him. The un-
initiated are told that the observer has had a shaman’s experi-
ence. With the aid of the older kukusiut he then performs a
dance and conjuring feat of the type already described (I, p.
564), and is secluded until the next autumn, meanwhile
wearing the distinctive collar of a shaman. In the songs used
on this occasion no mention is made of a wash-basin, so of
course the lad only performs ceremonially. When winter
comes he is formally initiated into the society.

It is somewhat difficult to understand and explain the
sentiments which lead a young man to obey rigidly the dictates
of the senior kukusiut in deceiving his former friends. If
it becomes known that a youth has seen something which
should have been concealed, the senior Aukusiut of his village
meet in their ceremonial spot and decide that he must be put
through the shaman’s rite. Some relative of the youth is al-
ways ready to provide the necessary kusiut prerogative; other-
wise he would have to be killed. Two or three members are
then sent to catch the young man. On some pretext they lure
him into the woods and then carry him away, struggling in
fear, to the holy of holies, the place which he had been told to
avoid since he would die if he penetrated to it. Here he finds
all the seniors of his village, seated with grave expressions on