CHAPTER II

RELIGION

The Universe — Supernatural Beings — Supernatural Elements in Human Beings—Means of Propitiation

THe UNIVERSE

NE of the subjects about which Bella Coola philosophers pondered in former times, and about which definite information has come down to the present generation, is the universe. The young people, who have absorbed a certain amount of education from the white man, are scornful of the beliefs of their fathers, but it was possible to obtain the fol- lowing information from a few of the older men and women. They say that the earth is circular and flat, like an island. What it rests upon is problematical, though the assumption is that it is water. The world is kept from capsizing by the supernatural being, Sinia, who lives amid the ice in the far north; he grasps a rope to which the earth is fastened, and he keeps it steady by maintaining a tension on the rope to hold the world against his feet. Long, long ago Sninia was seen by human beings, but in later years no one has penetrated to his distant home and the Bella Coola have little regard for him. It was in the distant past, also, that human beings discovered the earth to be round, after certain semi-supernatural men had made a circuit of it. The four corners of space have not the same importance to the Bella Coola as they have, for example, to the Indians of the Plains. It is only through questioning that the investigator learns that the East is regarded as the top of the world, the South is the sun at its zenith, the West is the bottom, and the North is nothing, merely the opposite to the south. These beliefs play little part in the lives of the people. Above our earth stretches an inverted dome, its edges resting on those of the world. This dome, the sky, 1s called

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