96 WHALING 



Indians a place of marked importance; hence it is not a matter 

 for wonder that it should partake of the characteristics both of 

 a royal sport and of a religious festival. It was the prerogative 

 and duty of the king to kill the first whale of the season, re- 

 gardless of the opportunities that chance might afford to some- 

 one else, and no person whatsoever was permitted to strike any 

 whale until the king had drawn first blood, if the king was pres- 

 ent at the hunting. Further, so long as any chief was present, 

 no one of the common people was permitted to touch a living 

 whale. 



As the season approached in the spring, the king would go 

 secretly, very early in the morning, into the mountains to sing 

 and pray for successful whaling, and after a day of solitude, 

 would return late at night. Twice, as the tribe neared the 

 whaling ground, he would repeat the ceremony, and after the 

 third day in the wilderness he would affect a thoughtful and 

 gloomy manner for forty-eight hours, fasting and scarcely 

 speaking, wearing a broad band of red bark round his head as a 

 mark of humility, and a branch of spruce in his top-knot, and 

 always carrying a great rattle in his hand. 



The rites grew in severity and importance as the day of whal- 

 ing drew near. For a week the king and his canoemen ate little, 

 and several times every day, going into the water to bathe, they 

 sang and rubbed themselves from head to foot with shells and 

 bushes until the skin was bruised and torn. Finally, as the 

 one thing that above all others was necessary to bring them 

 success, they abstained from intercourse with women. If ill 

 fortune attended them during the whaling season, they attri- 

 buted it to someone's transgression of this rule. 



To make their harpoons, they sharpened pieces of bone on 

 one side and hollowed them out on the other, and so shaped 

 them that when they were set together in the forms of flukes or 

 barbs with the sharp edges pointing out, the staff or shaft would 

 fit into the hollow. These they lashed to the shaft, and to crown 

 the whole they fitted a point of mussel shell ground sharp, which 

 they fastened in place with pitch. To the head of the harpoon 

 they then made fast a line of whale sinew some nine feet long, 



