Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/502

 1 5 4 Journal of A merican Folk-L ore.

heaven. This is conceived as a treeless prairie ; a great wind continually blows, and sweeps all things toward the house of the goddess who here reigns, and who in the beginning acted as a world-maker, warring with the mountains, and reducing their height. In this heaven is also a river (per- haps the milky way ?) which flows through the lower heaven, and by ascend- ing which the upper sky may be gained. The earth floats as an island in an ocean, and is moored by stone ropes fast to a stone bar held by a giant. When he is tired, his movements cause earthquakes. The first hell or underworld is the region of ghosts ; these, it is stated, cannot return to the earth (but their world may be visited by shamans). A peculiar feature is a rope ladder, communicating with the first heaven, whither the ghosts may ascend, and be once more sent down to earth from the house of the gods, to be reborn in the same families. Not all ghosts, however, feel the desire to ascend ; some are content with their lot, and sink to the lower hell, where in the end they suffer a second and final death.

How far is this elaborate cosmology peculiar to the Bella Coola, how far in part the property of other races ? In his account of the Kwakiutl, con- tained in the Report of the National Museum for 1895 (Washington, 1897), Dr. Boas does not elucidate their cosmogonic ideas, and perhaps these are not very distinct. However, we note one or two correspondences. Thus, with regard to the winds of the upper region, we find that in the sacred dance of the Na'naqaualil (Report, p. 471), the movements of the dancers and the lively motions of their blankets represent the effect of the winds of the higher atmosphere, the region in which the original initiation is sup- posed to take place. So with the Bella Coola, the spirit who initiated the ancestor of the tribe Se'nxlemx, and whose proper abode is the lower heaven, takes the youth into the upper heaven, where a wind blows the two to the house of Qama'its, the goddess of that region (Mythology, p. 35). Again, with regard to the rebirth of ghosts, we are told in a particular song of the Kwakiutl that the dancer for whom the words were modified was considered as the reincarnation of her deceased brother (Report, p. 485). The Bella Coola take the moon in eclipse to be painted black for the sake of the rites ; now with the Kwakiutl we find the blackened moon repre- sented by a dancer (Report, p. 455). So the idea of a floating earth seems familiar ; at least we read of a fabulous people supposed to live on a float- ing island (p. 468). With the Kwakiutl, the great cannibal spirit lives in the north, but in the sky, where his post is the Milky Way (p. 459). With the Bella Coola a similar spirit has only a room in the House of Myths, which is placed in the zenith. The sun-house, one would think, should be in the east ; and in heaven should be many houses. The Bella Coola may have brought these various habitations into one. With the Kwakiutl we find the phrase " centre of the world " used poetically, as representing that spot which is the centre of divine life, without regard to the direction of the compass (Report, p. 457). May it not be that this has originally been the case with the House of Myths ?

The winter ceremonial of the Bella Coola is plainly identical with that of other tribes. These rites are initiatory as respects the youth, histori-

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