Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/361

Rh 's Bay Company parlance as a "two-and-a-half point" blanket, is the standard, and is named ul'-hul-as-kum.

When a child has grown large enough to leave the little cradle, tied into which it spends most of its earlier days, usage demands that the cradle, together with all the wrappings and bark forming the bedding and its appendages, shall be carefully collected and carried to a recognized place of deposit. This custom is not now strictly adhered to with regard to the cradle, but is still obligatory in respect to the bedding, which is generally neatly packed in a box or basket, and laid away, never to be touched again. Every village probably has such a place of deposit. That for the Kā-loo-kwis village is a sheltered recess in limestone cliffs at the western extreme of Harbledown Island. It is named kī-ats-a-kwāish', or "cedar-bark deposit-place." Another similar recess in a cliff, filled with cradle wrappings, exists on the south side of Pearse Peninsula, east end of Broughton Island. At Mel'-oopa and at Hwat-ēs' there are similar places, that at the first-named village being beneath logs, at the back of the village, and not on the shore.

When a young man desires to obtain a girl for a wife, he must bargain with her parents, and pay to her father a considerable number of blankets. Owing to the great desire to accumulate blankets for the purposes of the potlatch or donation-feast, together with the scarcity of marriageable girls, the parents are very strict and exacting in this respect. The young man is often still further fleeced by his wife, who, at the instigation of her parents, may seize upon some real or imaginary cause of grievance and leave him. The father then exacts a further blanket payment for her return, and so on.

Medicine, or sorcery, as practiced by these people for the cure of disease, is much the same as among other tribes of the coast, though the peculiar tubular bone charm, employed by the Haida and Tshmisian, was not here observed. The sorcerer may be either a man or a woman, famed for skill in such matters, to whom their vocation may have been indicated by dreams or visions. Medicines may be given to the patient by his friends, but the sorcerer does not deal in drugs, devoting his attention solely to exorcising the evil principle causing the disease. This is done by singing incantation songs, the use of a rattle, and vigorous sucking of the part affected, which in many cases is kept up for hours and frequently repeated, and must always be handsomely paid for. Sickness is still, generally, and was formerly at all times, attributed to the witchcraft of enemies. Certain persons were known to possess the power, and were called ē'-a-kēnooh. Such a malignant person, wishing to bewitch an enemy, is supposed to go through a series of complicated and absurd